Fish Tales

by Bill Eden

Aug 29, 2007

There are so many lakes in this area it is very hard to pick one to fish on. So I picked one that I had not been on in some time. This lake has a fair population of bass and pickerel in it and there’s also a few pike.

During the day lots of boats scoot all over it, but after sun down you can have the lake all to yourself. Unless it is a long weekend, of course. Then you must watch out for the drunks that go out on the lake at night and roar round in the dark.

Twice I have had boats come flying down the lake at full throttle and they’ve almost run me down in my canoe while I was fishing at night. If you flash a light at them, it only gives them something to aim at! Did I mention that the night fishing is wonderful?

The road in to this particular lake is only wide enough for one car at a time. So it is not the sort of place that you want to meet someone if you are towing a boat trailer. But by the time we go out here, most people are getting ready for bed.

The gear we’ve brought with us is sorted by the beam of the head lights. When we get out on the water, the only time a light is turned on is when we try and net a bigger fish — or sort out a big tangle. Most of my navigation is by fish finder. You see, most of the fish are found in less that 10 feet of water. So you are either running into the weeds that line the shore of the lake, or you are out in water that is too deep to hold many fish.

On nights that have moonlight, you can pick your way around the lake by looking at the homes along the shore line. But on dark nights you can only watch the skyline. Even on the darkest nights you can see large trees and high hills. But you can’t always see the swim rafts that sit low in the water on a dark night. That was how I scared the beegeebers out of myself one dark and stormy night.

For years I had put in and turned left in this lake, heading along the weedy sand bar and up along the stone pile that marked the old boat house. On this night, the wind was blowing a bit, so it was hard to keep on course.

I had my head down trying to read the fish finder and steering the canoe along the drop off. All of a sudden there was a deafening crash and I stopped so fast I almost fell out of the canoe. I broke out into a hot flash and am sure if I had not had a pee back at the truck, I would have spotted. That raft hadn’t been there the year before but it was there now.

I learned a valuable lesson that night: keep your head up because things change over the years.

The other things I run into are water lines. Most are dropped just past the first deep water. This just happens to be where the fish are and I sometimes get a lure hooked up on the plastic jug that marks the end of the line.

Since the water is shallow, you need to troll lures that do not run very deep. Most of the time stick baits with a small lip will do the trick, both jointed and the straight ones. The only difference is how they act in the water. Some roll and others wiggle. Let the fish tell you what they want. The colour has little to do with catching fish at night; most of the fish hear the vibrations and come over to see what it is. Then if the speed and shape are right, they snap it up.

On this night I caught both bass and pickerel on a black jitterbug. But it had to be a cast and five pulls of line off the reel behind the boat. Sometimes it has been a gold and black bomber that has been the hot ticket.

I did have one strange encounter with a bat on this night. He buzzed around my head for about an hour. Likely I was being used as bait to lure in the bugs that he liked to feed on. It flew around the tip of my fishing rod and then would make a few laps around my head. At one point I think it landed in the boat with me. I could hear it, but not see it.

Likely wondered what sort of thing I was to be out on the lake at this time of night.