Posts tagged “largemouth bass”

Mr. Almost

Posted on April 17th, 2012

The fly line entangled in some shoreline debris and I looked down to yank it free, and at that moment a green shape chose to cut through the water to my popper. I had no tension on the line so I watched its fat profile surge and descend on the popper, create a brief interlude of chaos and disappear. The excessively corpulent type of largemouth, the kind that would give FLW types arrhythmia, has eluded me for 12 years, ever since a memorable encounter on a small lake in Michigan. Since then I’ve had to settle for the small to decent to merely large. The near misses are haunting. In the end it gets added to the personal rolodex of frustration, along with the…

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Stolen

Posted on January 25th, 2012

When there is no time afforded you have to steal some. Five casts. Fifty casts. Five hundred. Whatever it takes to make something out of another thing that you don’t rightfully have. One jump should suffice to bend it back in your favor.

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FLORIDA: The Ditch Slam

Posted on November 3rd, 2011

The whole thing started with the least of expectations. I had a rod and some time to kill due to a delayed appointment. I made some casts. I caught nothing. I drove to the appointment. Delayed again, for another hour. I google mapped. I found nearby water. I tried a new fly. On my first cast I caught a mayan cichlid. Sweet. Then I saw a dark swirling shape hanging out near a submerged drain pipe. I made a cast. A largemouth bass with a middling amount of heft liked my offering. OK, cool. I released the bass. Then I saw two bulbous fish cruising the shoreline at a fast clip. I made a lead cast. One charged like a mofo. It took off…

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Uneasy Rider

Posted on September 9th, 2011

On a back road between New Smyrna and Sanford I pulled off to the side in front of a goat farm. A pond sat in the front pasture between the house and the roadside fence. I’d always heard of people asking farmers for permission and it looked fishy and I wanted to try it. The crushed rock and sand driveway under my feet made loud sounds as I walked to the house, causing the nanny goats and kids to look up from their grazing and I could feel them staring at me behind my back. No one answered when I knocked on the door–I couldn’t find a doorbell button–and I quickened my step going back to the car. I closed the driver-side door against…

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Even The Bass Pile On Sometimes

Posted on July 13th, 2011

I Google Earthed the locale near my hotel. Water. Accessible water. Sometimes the satellites do not present the full picture. I took to Beta testing some bad-ass prototypes from WT. Prognosis? They cast well and swim well. Fish? What do you want? It’s Florida in July; 95 degrees in the freaking gloaming. Due time for paydirt. Field testing in the name of science builds an appetite. This is what you call a dynamic cuban sandwich. On to the hotel bar to cleanse the palate and hear the lounge act.

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Largesse

Posted on May 6th, 2011

  Thank you for subscribing to two of the deadly sins, avarice and gluttony. Thank you for trying to eat the object making raucous splashes that doesn’t really look like food, just in case. Thank you for jumping.

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So You Want To Catch a Bass, Son?

Posted on April 16th, 2010

The first thing you do is drive west. Past all the planned communities and through the endless horizon of cane fields, some thick with smoke from controlled burn, and make your way to the big lake. Then drive onto and over the levee and the single lane bridge and meet buddy Don at the launch ramp. Don is a tournament bass fisherman. He’s pre-fishing and you’re going along for the ride, skating at 60 on the pad. Don can do some things with a baitcaster in his hand. He’s working the bass in shallow, going off the grid and you’re trying to cast your fly rod in and around the tall grass and strip your so-called weedless through the  dense vegetation. The bass key…

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