Bass are lurking in the Weeds

• Summertime and the living is easy. Bass are jumping and the corn's getting high -- or something like that, according to composer George Gerschwin's classic blues song. Anyone who fishes the region's many shallow, lily-filled, bog-type ponds during the summer, often see bass jumping out of the water to catch dragon flies as these insects patrol for the smaller insects on which they prey.
• Bright sun and high water temperatures during the summer doldrums often foil the efforts of mid-summer and daytime anglers. By now, trout are par-boiled, sunfish are in their glory, catfish are feeding well and bass are sporadically active. In deep-water lakes, they are pretty much on a dawn, dusk and rainy day feeding schedule.
• Shallow, weedy ponds are a different story.
• I call them dragon-fly days, those hot times of the summer when the dragon flies are out and about in squadrons, with largemouth bass, usually smaller fish in constant pursuit, often doing aerial maneuvers in an effort to grab a chance meal out of the sky.
• From a nutritional point of view, it seems like a great deal of expended energy to maybe catch a single, though large insect. But bass in shallow bog-type ponds feed constantly on dragon flies and other prey they capture on or near the surface of their shallow, weedy habitats.
• It makes sense, because in shallow, weed-choked lakes, where there may not be any deep cool water in which to spend a hot summer afternoon, the bass are literally driven into the shade under expanses of lily pad and other emergent species of vegetation or get sunburned.
• As a child, I once spent a couple bucks out of my hard-earned Norwich Bulletin paper route money to purchase a dragon-fly lure after observing a huge bass nab one in mid-air at Bog Meadows. It cast poorly, never produced a fish and mercifully broke off in the pads, so I had to stop using it. Since I fished this shallow bass and weed-filled lake almost daily, my inability to harvest those weed beds for its bassy treasure had me trying every species of weedless lure in creation.
• This was at a time when plastic worms were new on the market and the only lures that effectively fished weeds -- but only sparse ones -- were a classic Johnson's Silver Minnow and another spoon called a Hawaiian Wiggler by the Fred Arbogast Co. Both cast well, but snagged weeds constantly and missed most of the fish that struck.
• Whippy fishing rods and monofilament that stretched like an elastic band in those days were good parts of this problem. Whatever the excuse, I was constantly frustrated by the weedless lures available at that time.
• I happened to see a fishing show on TV that featured a Massachusetts angler named Bill Plummer. On camera, he was filmed catching numerous largemouth bass in the 6-pound to 10-pound range from Quabbin Reservoir, a famous fishing destination across the state border on a lure called a Bass Frog. It was a truly weedless, fish-catching lure that he invented and began marketing in the 1960s.
• By chance, while shopping in a department store in Shrewsbury, Mass., called Spag's, I saw and immediately bought my first weedless Bass Frog lure around that time. On its maiden trip to the old bog, my new lure unceremoniously busted off my line by a bass that was at least 6 pounds. I saw that lunker jump out of the water and down on top of the frog, mouth wide-open, so it made a loud "bop" when it hit the water. Like a small explosion, it blasted away, wrapped a few pounds of lily stems and broke off in less time than it took to read this passage. I was devastated, ticked off, but excited because I'd finally found the key to fishing the weeds.
• It took a little practice and tweaking, but after replacing the frog with a half dozen more, I racked up a number of 3-pound to 5-pound largemouths that summer and have caught a couple of more than 7 pounds on this lure throughout the years. From that time on, a mid-summer, daylight style of bass fishing I called "bass frogging" evolved.
• After several permutations and changes in weed fishing lures, we now call it salad spooning or slopping the pigs, depending on which of three excellent weedless lures are being cast. The primary is a Salad Spoon (made by Lunker City, the makers of Slug-Go's), fished with a size 3/0 Texposer Hook or a pair of larger, weedless top water musky/pike lures from Oddessey Lures called the Sloppee Pig, a 9-inch-long monster that can plow through dinner-plate sized pads like a small boat and its son, the Sloppee Pig Jr., that is about 6 inches long and fishes well in small-to-medium pads.
• The point is all three of these lures are designed with upturned hooks, so they swim or skim over the tops of most species of weeds and are particularly deadly in dense beds of small lilies. In fact, I use Salad Spoons, which have a large twister tail that gives them a very soft, lifelike gurgle for most of my open water surface fishing instead of the much more popular buzz baits.
• Weed fishing is a crude, barroom brawl-style of surface fishing that requires heavy-duty tackle. Yet there is a certain amount of finesse involved to be consistently successful. I use the same -- or even heavier -- gear for weed fishing than I do most of the time for striped bass. A 7-foot medium heavy-action rod spooled with 20-pound test Fireline or Diawa's new Saltiga braid is a near necessity to consistently land bass.
• The rig must be heavy and powerful enough to set the hook into the jaw of a big bass, through the drag of lily stems and then be capable of extracting and hauling in fish of 2 pounds or less. Bigger fish must be quickly retrieved before they gain leverage and enough slack line to shake the hook.
• The finesse part of salad spooning comes from working these surface lures weed-free and making accurate casts that thoroughly cover every patch of lilies, while making pinpoint casts to spots where fish have been observed jumping or moving in the weeds.
• Any finesse in this game ends with the strike. When a fish approaches, don't set the hook until it has taken the lure down and its weight is definitely felt. Set back hard and maintain pressure until the bass is landed.
• The fun and excitement in this style of fishing comes from visible surface strikes and being able to catch bass during the heat of a summer day, long after other anglers have gone home. (written by Bob Sampson, for Norwich Bulletin).Check out Bob Sampsons' podcast here.