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Jack’s best bites of 2015
One thing people today like is a good list.
Top 10s, Best Evers, Worst Dressed, and plenty of others are eye-catchers, especially in our Age of Information Overload as we gravitate to information that doesn’t require an hour of our time and two cups of coffee to soak in.
So today we offer Jack’s Best Bites of 2015. As you might guess, it’s about fishing.
I tuck my list in a corner of my head, where it is handy for those times when a little daydreaming can stave off the tedium of a long drive.
When the odometer is smoking up the miles, my brain shifts into fishing gear:
First Bite: It was on one of those late-March afternoons when the weather was teetering between raw and bearable. I’d pulled the boat out of storage, charged the batteries and figured a few hours on Mosquito would be good medicine.
I’ve learned to temper my expectations for the year’s first fishing trip. So I was thrilled that afternoon when a 2-pound largemouth sipped my jig and I jabbed the hook.
Most Bites: Who knew when I pulled away from the dock at Mosquito one day in May that it would shape up as memorable? My first stop was on stretch of flooded willows that yielded a half-dozen bites. When the day was done the deck was littered with tatters of soft-plastic baits ripped by more than 30 bass.
Biggest Bite: When you set the hook on a fish that won’t budge, all manner of possibilities race through your mind. This particular bite happened on the Ohio River in June when I pitched a beaver-tail bait into the down-current hole under a sycamore trunk.
The line twitched and I jerked. But nothing happened. It was as though I’d wedged the bait into a snag. Then the “snag” surged from its lair. It was a 25-pound flathead catfish with a fat brown body and gaping maw. Ugly and huge, for sure.
Best Topwater Bite: It was the first strike of the morning at this year’s Muransky Companies Bass Classic. Tournament partner Ted Suffolk and I set out with high hopes for a money finish and our optimism was bolstered with my third cast of the morning teased a 3-pound largemouth.
The fish darted from a weed patch and rolled up on my topwater plug in textbook fashion.
Best Crankbait Bites: Bass pal Tom Rolland and I shared a day on his boat. We’d had an on-and-off morning. We pulled up to an always-productive stretch of hard-bottom structure and quickly scored with crankbaits.
Rolland boated a 2-pound smallmouth. A moment later, I stuck a fish I could barely manage. It bulldogged around and under the boat. Finally, we slipped the net under a 10-pound hybrid striper. Two cranks into my next retrieve, the lure stopped in the jaw of an acrobatic 3.5-pound smallie. It was perhaps the best 10 minutes of fishing all year.
Worst Bite: Lake Erie got the better of me one Saturday in August. I’d recruited buddy Ricky White to make the trip with a promise he’d have a blast. But the bass didn’t get their invitation. If a 10-pound sheephead counts, then the day wasn’t a total loss.
Last Bite: It was kind of anti-climactic, now that I think about the last bite of ’15. I didn’t know it at the time, but the skinny 12-inch bass I dropped back into Shenango that October afternoon was the last fish I hooked this year – so far.
I put the boat in storage a few weeks ago, but there’s always a chance I’ll sneak out to cast for crappies and perch from the rocks at Mosquito State Park, so maybe my list will gain an entry before Christmas.
Perhaps you have your own “best of” list. Let me know and I will share them here soon.