Finding your own fishing paradise

One man has found his paradise, a small town in Kansas.
By BRENT FRAZEE
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
EL DORADO, Kan. -- Jeremy Sundgren was rambling down the back roads in the area's Flint Hills, taking in the scenery and dreaming about big bass.
Some people see nothing more than a sea of grass when they take such a drive. But they're not really looking, Sundgren will tell you.
Get off the beaten track and really dive into the Flint Hills, he says, and you'll find a world of subtle beauty -- and a bass-fishing paradise.
"I've been to a lot of different places, but I still don't think there's anything more beautiful than the Flint Hills," Sundgren said as he bounced down a rutted road in his truck. "You get down on some of these ponds, and you're just surrounded by rolling hills and green everywhere you look.
"You're back off the road, there's no one else around and you're fishing this little jewel of a lake that hardly gets any pressure at all. That's my idea of bass fishing."
Sundgren was headed into that paradise, passing through several gates on a big ranch until he topped a hill and looked down on a valley sparkling with water.
One pond and one larger watershed lake loomed below. And Sundgren's fishing fever soared.
"From the interstate, people don't see all the water that the Flint Hills have," he said. "But you get out on the back roads, and you'll see all kinds of ponds and watersheds like these.
"This is cattle country, and the ponds are watering holes. The watersheds are used for flood and erosion control. The nice thing is, most of this water has bass.
"And a lot of these places hardly get touched. You can still have days when you'll catch 50 or more bass."
Days like this one.
From the moment Sundgren slid his plastic two-man boat onto a pond surrounded by the region's trademark hills, he was catching bass.
On one of his first casts, he bounced his jig-and-pig combination down a ledge off the bank and immediately felt a tap. When he set the hook, a 2-pound bass burst out of the water and landed with a loud splash.
No sooner had he released that bass than he had another one. And then another. By the time we had made one pass around the large pond, Sundgren and I had caught and released 45 bass -- up to 4 1/2 pounds.
Trips to two other ponds produced similar results, and by the end of the day, we had reeled in more than 100 bass.
Spoiled
An extraordinary day? Not in Sundgren's world.
A small-water bass specialist, he is accustomed to such action. He admits he is spoiled.
"I don't even own a big boat," said Sundgren, who lives in El Dorado. "I don't even fish the big reservoirs.
"Why should I? I can come here to the Flint Hills and have a better chance of catching bass."
One thing is certain: Sundgren will never run out of places to fish. He runs an auction company, and through his job gains access to plenty of farm ponds and watershed lakes.
He figures he has permission to fish more than 200 places on private land in the Flint Hills -- and some jewels that he won't forget.
"One time we were auctioning off a 7,200-acre ranch that had a farm pond way in the back," Sundgren said. "We wanted to mention the pond in the ad, but the landowner didn't know much about what it had in it, so we went out and fished it.
"We caught 25 to 30 bass over 4 pounds that day. That's the best day of bass fishing I've ever had."
But a hot day in August of 2005 came close.
On that outing, Sundgren cast a jig and pig into the deepest part of a pond and just barely moved the lure across the bottom. He felt a slight tap at the end of the line and set the hook. When he did, something big pulled back.
A few minutes later, he was holding a 9-pound bass -- his biggest ever.
"That's the nice thing about these ponds. They hold some huge bass," Sundgren said. "You have a chance to catch a 5-pound bass every time out."
Sundgren catches his biggest bass on a jig-and-pig combination, a crawdad imitation that is well-known as a big-bass lure. But when the bass are aggressive, especially in the spring and fall, he also does well with a spinnerbait.
"You have an advantage when you fish these ponds and watersheds because they get less pressure than public places and you know where the bass are going to be," Sundgren said. "And here in the Flint Hills, with all of the grass and rock, the water never really muddies up too bad in most of these ponds, even after it rains.
"It's just a great place to fish if you like to catch bass."