Last Cast Fish
This past sunday I went out to Larry’s witness protection pond. The weather was overcast with drizzle later on. I got there late in the afternoon around 2pm and fished until about 5pm. This has been my best day fishing all summer. I mainly used Thomas buoyant spoons to catch most of the fish. I caught 6 yellow perch. 5 bluegills, 1 golden shiner .
I started out using a 7’ Shimano FXS spinning rod with a medium action, paired with a Shimano IX 2000 reel with 6lb Trout S.O.S Line. For terminal tackle I tied on a size 0 eagle claw ball bearing swivel using a Trilene knot.
This particular rod has a slow tip even though it is supposed to be medium action rod. This makes it a good trout dough rod but lacks the power to set the hook on heavy fish with hard mouths, i.e. LMBs.
It is because of this that I missed hooking into a Bass that attacked the spoon close to shore.
Ironically, this also makes this rod excellent at casting light weight lures such as the Blue Fox Vibrax minnow spin and Thomas double spin lures.
The first lure of the day was a Chartreuse Thomas buoyant spoon. On another trip to this same location this was the hot color but not today. So I changed that one out to a black spoon of the same type. Still no takers. So I changed that one out for the rainbow trout color Blue Fox Vibrax minnow spin. Bingo! I landed my first fish of the day which was a yellow perch. I unhooked it and returned it to the water. Right after that I hooked into a Medium sized golden shiner. They always put up good fight for their size and they are shiny and not so spiny, so I like catching them.
Then the bite died down.
Since dull colors where not so productive I put on copper buoyant and fished that for awhile. Moved down the shore a bit and put the Black buoyant on again. The back of this spoon has is yellow/Chartreuse color. I saw several fish attack it and miss. As it got close to shore I speed up the retrieve to cast it back out again which caused the spoon to jump out of the water and drop back in. That is when a Bass attacked it right from the shore line. However, because the rod tip is not stiff enough to set the hook on a strike like that the fish got away.
I kept fishing until I got a significant birds nest from casting light lures a long distance. Of course this happened while I had a lure with a treble hook out in the water. I pulled off about a 90 yards of 6lb line before I got to offending loop then I spent several minutes carefully untangling and reeling line back onto the reel. With the tangle was sorted out, I changed out the lure, which did not get hung up while I was dealing with the line, with a heavier Johnson’s silver minnow. The reason that I do this after a birds nest, is so that the line that was loose and loopy, gets cast out into the water and is reeled back onto the spool tight and even.
While I was doing this I hooked up with another perch the biggest one of the day.
Since I had two rods with me, I decided to work with my 6’.6†medium action eagle claw with a Shimano IX 4000 reel with 10# Trilene XL line (Fluorescent Blue/Clear). The backbone on this rod is truly medium, when I set the hook with this one it drives the hook home. The other interesting thing is that I don’t really lose all that much distance with this set up compared to the previous one. I also don’t have to worry about snapping the tip if I tie on heavier lures.
With this in mind, I put on a 3/4 oz Blue fox strobe spoon with a fire tiger finish. Fished that for awhile without success before replacing it with a 2/5 oz, Little Cleo with a Hammered Fire Gold finish. I spent a fair amount of time working out the best retrieves with these spoons to give them a fish tempting action. Once I tired of that I put on another Thomas buoyant, this time with a Black Dot Frog pattern. I caught three blue gills on this lure including a rather large one that was hooked on all three points of the treble. (This is my biggest gripe about treble hooks, catching a fish, especially a smaller fish on all three points complicates catch and release fishing.) I was able to successfully remove the hooks without injuring the fish too much. Patience and needle nose pliers are required for this sort of operation.
Since I did not want to continue catching blue gills I changed that lure for a Gold buoyant. I worked this lure up and down the shoreline for until I got tired of fishing. Then on the very last cast, I caught my sixth and final Yellow Perch of the day.
Wow, that is one detailed account, particularly on the tackle, good job!
Nice to see someone going specifically for pan fish on light tackle, in this forum of so many bass-centric fishermen - myself included!