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Recently I was fortunate to be introduced to a serious bass fisherman. By serious, I mean a tournament bass fisherman who is a member and secretary of the Bangor Bass Club. Jason Cyr was kind enough to take me out on his bass boat to give me a taste of what tournament bass fishing was all about.
Once on the water in a lake to be left unnamed, Jason hit the throttle and the 115-horsepower outboard placed us in our first fishing spot in about a millisecond. Imagine a Star Trek episode when the spaceship reaches warp speed and all the stars speed past; that’s the feeling of a bass boat at full throttle. There really should have been a sticker on the console that read, “Please hold onto your hat because you will lose it.” That thrill ride was contrasted with the whisper-quiet electric trolling motor that propelled us slowly along the shoreline for most of the day.
His boat was stocked with spinning and baitcasting rods and reels rigged with a variety of baits. I started out with a familiar spinning setup, since I had never used the harder to master baitcasting reel—the tool most “real” bass fishermen use. Both of us were using a dark, five-inch Senko in what Jason described as “whacky rigged.” That is basically a rubber worm hooked through the middle leaving the worm hanging to either side of a size 3/0 hook. I was skeptical that such a simple worm rig would work but when Jason immediately hooked up with a slab of a smallmouth I became a believer.
The technique for this bait is to cast, let it sink to the bottom, lift the rod tip, reel in, and repeat. Usually you would feel a tap on the descent and you set the hook. Before long I was dragging my share of bass to the side of the boat.
I had always known that Maine had good smallmouth bass fishing, but until that day I assumed largemouth bass were predominantly found further south. I was dead wrong. We were catching almost equal amounts of smallmouth and largemouth bass. To be a successful bass fisherman you need to read the water and have an understanding of fish patterns at certain times of the year. In this case during post spawn, the small and largemouth bass were congregated in the same general area—though the smallmouth bass preferred a clearer rockier bottom while the largemouths hit hard in weedier sections and closer to the shoreline.
It soon became obvious that tournament bass fishermen are concerned with the welfare of the fish. Jason’s gear was set up so there would be no long drawn-out fights that wear down a bass. If a bass was brought to the boat that was hooked deep or had any bleeding, no photographs were taken and that fish was released immediately to better ensure its survival. During a tournament a five-fish limit is kept for the final weigh-in, but those fish are kept plenty healthy in aerated live wells until released back into the lake.
I must have proven I wasn’t totally incompetent and was eventually handed a baitcasting reel. After some instruction I managed to cast without creating the much maligned “birds nest.” That’s when the line becomes a tangled mess because you failed to feather the spool with your thumb during the cast. Jason was kind enough to remark that I was the first person he had seen that didn’t get a backlash the first time out. That was probably because I was only getting about 10 feet on my casts. But that was long enough to catch another nice bass on a crankbait lure called a Rat-L-Trap.
I had commandeered the carpeted platform in the back of the 18-foot bass boat and it proved roomy and perfect for standing up and casting for hours. I admit to wishing I had brought my bass fly rod because throwing a fly line would have been a breeze on this perch. But I didn’t have much time to ponder other fishing methods since between the both of us we caught over 25 fish in four hours, almost split down the middle between smallmouth and largemouth with largemouth taking a slight edge. These were all big healthy bass in the 2.5 to 3.5 pound range.
While at the boat ramp, getting ready to head home, another fisherman walked up to us and asked how we did. We both replied, “Pretty good, you?”
He said he had been fishing for togue (lake trout) and had been skunked. Jason and I threw knowing glances at each other: yet another trout fisherman that hadn’t discovered the excitement of bass fishing—his loss for sure.
Brad Eden is an artist, writer, Registered Maine Master Guide, and owner/editor of the online magazine www.uplandjournal.com. Information on the Bangor Bass Club and upcoming tournaments can be found at www.bangorbass.com.
