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Bangor Metro >  August 2005 >  Redeeming the Smallmouth Bass

Illustration by: Brad Eden

Every sportsman can look back and recall touchstone moments in their outdoor careers-happenings that are indelibly etched in their minds. Maybe it was watching their first white-tailed buck mince its way down a hardwood ridge or witnessing the first point from their bird dog pup.

Such an event occurred to this young tyro in an aluminum rowboat, on a body of water to be left unnamed. Fishermen, like bird hunters, never give out their secret spots. This was the day an annual fishing trip with my older brother turned into one of those benchmark moments. To say the fish were biting this spring day would have been an understatement; they were, in fact, like sharks in a feeding frenzy. We had somehow placed ourselves on the water at the exact moment the smallmouth bass were spawning and were very protective of their underwater nests. This state of affairs caused them to strike just about any lure that dared invade their territory.
We were fishing with medium-weight spinning gear and quickly learned a deep-running Rapala crankbait bumped along the bottom was the best medicine. It seemed like every cast was rewarded with a hookup that felt like we had snagged a 50-pound snapping turtle-until the line ripped through the water and a "smallie" would launch itself skyward, shaking its head trying to rid itself of the lure. That aerial display was followed by a rod-bending tug-of-war, until we managed to boat the one- to three-pound fish. Repeat that exercise time and time again, and you'll understand why we ended the day with sore wrists and grins tattooed on our faces.

Maine is renowned for its much-revered cold water salmonoids like brook trout, landlocked salmon, and togue (lake trout). Many, on the other hand, consider the smallmouth bass a trash fish, an interloper not as welcome or worthy as these other more desired species. Part of the black bass family, Micropterus dolomieui can be found most anywhere clean, moving water is found, and are overshadowed again, quite literally, by the largemouth bass popular with tournament fishermen. They run smaller, are more streamlined, and are distinguished by a short upper lip, as opposed to the largemouth's lip, which extends past the eye. But they are most notable for their pugnacious attitude when attached to the end of a fly line leader or fishing line. What they lack on the dinner plate as compared to the pink flesh of a brook trout, they make up for with their eagerness to strike a variety of lures, jigs, and flies-with a vengeance. Pound for pound, no fish fights harder.

I'll still delicately fly cast for finicky trout and mindlessly troll for reluctant salmon, but put me in a canoe floating over the ledges hidden beneath the Penobscot River with a six-weight fly rod or ultralight spinning gear in my hand, throw in some scrappy smallies and here comes that grin again.

Trash fish? I think not.

Brad Eden is an artist, writer, Registered Maine Master Guide, and owner/editor of www.uplandjournal.com. He lives in Frankfort.