My Buddy Dick #2

Fishing With Dick-----
One night Dick and I got off work at 11 and headed for Otter lake. It is a lake only two miles from my home and has always been one of my favorite fishing spots It was a beautiful lake for the type of fishing I liked. At that time there were only a half dozen homes on the lake and the rest was all cattails and marsh. The next lake over is Sylvan and there is a big shallow marsh between them, sorta like a sunken island, with maybe a couple feet of water over six feet of muck. I used to trap muskrats and duck hunt there as a kid. Paddling a canoe through there was always a thrill in itself. There are lots of bullfrogs. I loved to paddle up in there at night and just listen to the bullfrogs and peepers, occasionally a big carp would come out of the water, casting her eggs. At times there would be hundreds of carp spawning up there, many tipping 20 lbs or more. During the heaviest spawning there would be a huge female, maybe 30 lbs or more and a bunch of smaller males swarming all over her, fertilizing her eggs as she cast them around. There would be dogfish too. They get pretty good size to but nothing like the carp. They are interesting when spawning because they tend their young after hatching. We would sometimes see a boiling in the water and on closer inspection see that it was hundreds of little dogfish just swarming over mama dogfish, who was laying on the bottom, hidden in the vegetation. It is tough to get through because of old dead trees lying in the water. The area was flooded in the late 1800’s and still there are the remains of the old trees.

On this night we spent quite a bit of time slowly paddling along Sylvan Lake, casting to the shore with out jitterbugs, with poor results. I don't think we had caught a darned thing all night. We were working our way over to Otter Lake, working our way to the marsh. It is very low with one little clump of a few trees. Along the edge, all the way around, are cattails and green plants I always called arrow weed. I don't know if that is what they really are but they grow in a couple feet of water and come out a foot or so and the leaves look like arrowheads.

The bass hide in these things and there are some mighty big bass in Otter lake, at least back then there were. There also were big areas of Lilly pads that the bass loved. They were hard to fish but we would toss out jitterbug up as close as we could and sometimes get a big old bass to come out for it.

Now Dick couldn't cast worth a crap. He would be hung up in the Lilly’s as much as not. Dick was a good buddy but I used to tell him that if they crammed his brain up a fleas arse, it would rattle like a BB in a boxcar. He would haul off and make a mighty cast toward the lillys and it did not make a difference if they were a hundred feet off or six feet. He cast like he did everything. Wide open and full bore.

It was just after dawn and we were slowly paddling up the west shore of the island. I should say that I was paddling as Dick did not paddle much. I was slowly paddling and would position the canoe, lay down the paddle and lightly toss the little black jitterbug up toward the lillys and slowly work it back, barely making the thing walk. I don’t know if the bass liked it but I sure did.

The water we were in was only about two or three feet deep and full of weeds. The weeds came up to within 6 inches of the surface. There was just enough water over the weeds to work the jitterbug. I cast out and look at Dick and he is hung up again. He come dragging in a glob of weeds and I can not see the lure. I asked what the hell he was using and he said a Rapalla. A Rapalla?? You dang fool! You can't fish a Rappie in this shallow water! The Rapalla is a diving lure and you could not retrieve it in that water. Just don’t try to tell Dick he can’t :O(

He say's "Why not?" and after hauling a half-pound of weeds off the lure, he cast again, immediately hanging up again. The Idjit! He was a pissing me off.

I dug in my tackle box and dug out a Rapalla too. If the moron was a gonna mess up my fishing, I would return the favor.

I tossed that Rapalla up as close to the shore and those Arrow Plants as I could. I was out 39 ft or so from shore and it lightly splashed 6 inches off the weeds and Dick said something. He was griping as he was hung up good. He wanted me to paddle him to the lure but I told him to haul us over, I was a gonna fish. I also tole him to kiss my arse. I looked to see where my lure was laying and could not see it, it was so still.

I wiggled it to see where it was and the water exploded. A big and I mean big old bass came out of that water after that lure and I instinctively sat the hook, about two seconds too soon and the dang Rapalla came out of the water and right at my head. I am a screaming some of the crap I get on Dick about and then some. I almost turn the dang canoe over but no fish.

I yell up at Dick, who is just looking at me as if he were in his right mind. Whut happened says he? WHAT HAPPENED?? WHAT HAPPENED?? YOU DANG FOOL!! IT WAS THE BIGGEST DANG BASS IN THE WHOLE LAKE, IS WHAT HAPPENED!

He asked where and I told him to watch and I would show him what happened. I then tossed the Rapalla back to the spot that I had the strike. I was describing what I had done and what happened, as I was doing it again. I said, I cast the lure..just about…right there. And the lure dropped in the same spot. The water was only a foot or so deep there. I told him I let is set as I watched an idiot clean weeds off a deep diving lure. I asked him if he wanted to borrow a daredevil next!

Anyway he said, “What happened then?” I said, as I was doing it, “I just wiggled the lure like this” and I wiggled the dang lure. SPLASH!!!SON OF A BEECH!! I set the hook in air again and almost flipped the canoe. I was a yelling, “You see that ^&$%*&# it was the biggest dang bass in the friggin lake. It was a monster. Did you see it?”

Dick said, “It was a bluegill” A BLUEGILL!! SCREAMS I!!! WHAT THE HELL YOU MEAN A %$#&^@ BLUEGILL? IT’S THE BIGGEST $^&&$*$*#^% FISH IN THE LAKE AND YOU SAY THE ()*&*(*&()* THING IS A BLUEGILL?? WHY YOU GOTTA BE AN ARSE HOLE?? I was livid that he would insult my record sized bass!!

Dick calmly asks me if I could try to control my language because some ladies little boy might be setting in the back yard and my language might be offensive to him. I told him to kiss my arse about then. I then asked him if he was blind and did he see the bass.

He got to laughing and said sure he had seen it. I backed off the canoe a bit, as it had drifted in a bit. I was excited. I had never tried fishing like that before. I had caught thousands of pike and walleye in Canada on Rapallas but it was not the lure of choice for me on the bass lakes.

Now we were getting serious. Dick was, as always, in the bow and I was paddling. This meant the clown had first choice of the fish but since he was lucky to even be able to hit water with the lure, I managed to lay my lure into many of the nicest holes first.

We worked our way up the shoreline, keeping casting distance from shore and just had a fantastic day. We limited out on bass, that is 10 bass between us and there was none under three lbs. We caught many more but we only kept the largest for the table.

I got so I could almost thread a needle with that lure.

What we would do it flip the floating Rapalla tight to the vegitation on shore, where we knew the bass were laying. We learned to watch for sign. If we watched closely we could see the weeds moving, opposite the breeze, if there was one. It would be more of a slow movement than wind anyway.

I would toss the lure up and just let it set. I would try to wait until the rings on the water disapated and then give it a slight giggle. Then I would watch the weeds and lilly’s for movement. Sometimes it was instant. The big ol’ bass would come a charging out at the lure and that was exciting but other times there would just be a slight hump in the water, back in the shelter of the Arrow weeds or Lilly’s. The slightest movement that meant I had better get ready. I would twitch it again and watch.

As ready as I was I would sometimes be supprised and set the hook in air. The nice thing was the fact that even if I missed, I could toss the lure back to the same place and the sucker would be there waiting for it.

In the Lilly pads I would flip the lure up to their edge and watch them. When I twitched the lure there was no telling where the bass would come from. I have seen them slowly working their way from 15 to 20 ft away as I patiently wiggled the lure. After I bought the worm rod I would cast the Rapalla right up into a likely hole in the lillys because I knew if I got hung up I could haul it out.

The water was too shallow and full of weeds to do a normal cast and retreve so this method worked great.

On opening day, the next spring, Dick and I were out on Otter lake with our Rapallas. I bought a Heddon worm rod, which was a rather heavy spinning rod with a fast tip. It had a lot of backbone so I could haul the bass out of the Lilly’s but the tip was sensitive enough that I could feel the lightest pickup when using crawlers.

Since I did all the paddling Dick usually did the stringing of the fish. I would just toss mine up to him and he would string it. As I said the limit was 5 each so we would sort them and when we caught a larger one, a small one would be taken off the stringer and tossed back.

There were quite a few boats out that day, since it was opening day for bass, but none of them were fishing the way we were. We were up in the shallows again with the Rappalas. Many bass were still on there beds and I would slowly drift along, wearing my poloroid sunglasses and watch for movement back in the arrow weeds. Like I said, the bass love them and the big ones could not move without the weeds moving too as the bumped against them. It happens in the lillys too if a person is willing to watch. I would see one of the stalks of Arrow weed move, even slightly, and I would flip the lure up there and let it set.

That was always a thrill for me too. Just watching that Rapalla set there and knowing there was a bass watching too. I did not know how big it was but until it sturck, it was a 7 pounder. At least to me it was. Course after it struck, many times it turned into a one or two pounder but until then……… :O)

I would give the lure a little jiggle. Not much, just a little twitch. You gotta be ready now. I would watch for movement in the weeds. Sometimes I would twitch it again and ten all hell would bust loose. At least that day it did!!

It was a great day of fishing for us. One of my best. It was funny because we must have caught a couple dozen bass, most nice ones but we only had 9 on the stringers. We wanted that last one to be a big one so we kept throwing the fish back, knowing a big one was coming to fill our limit. Didn’t happen. They quit hitting and we had to settle for the 9.

We were paddling across the lake and Dick insisted we pass every dang boat full of fishermen out there. We would be paddling by and Dick would ask how they were doing. They would say, “Not so hot, They ain’t biting today. You have any luck?”

That was Dicks cue. He would yell, “A few” and reach over to the stringer that was dragging in the water. He would haul it out of the water, with those 9 big bass on it and almost swamp the dang canoe every time! They would yell, and hollar and ask what we were using. Rapallas, we would tell them. They said they had been fishing with them all day and had caught diddly. Dick would just yell, “You just don’t know how to fish” and we would paddle off, leaving a boat load of pissed off fishermen. Dick was right though, they did not know how to fish the lake or lure but we were not gonna tell them.
I have used this same technique on many similar lakes and it works great under the right conditions. It works well in water most think are unfishable but the fact that I use a canoe and can get in there and we presented the lure properly really made us successful.

The water in Otter Lake used to be very clear. I remember when I was a kid and would be paddling out to duck hunt, the sight of the edge of the weed bed would spook me. We would come up on the deep side and be able to see 15 or 20 ft into the depths.

Now there are houses all around the lake, except on the marsh island and the people who buy the property on the lake because it is beautiful now have poisons put in the lake to kill the weeds because the weeds hinder their speedboats and jet ski’s. These dead weeds cause the algae to grow and now you can not see bottom in a foot of water.

The dang fools say the chemicals will not hurt the fish but what are they, stupid? You take away the habitat and you take away the fish. Fishing there is like fishing a waste land now.

On the other side of the lake there was another big shallow marsh and beyond that was the fields that we were camping when I threw the dead skunk in the Scout Masters tent. That is all condo’s now.

They can take away my fishing spots but they can not take away my memories..