Consider the largemouth bass: It is a fish with swinish shoulders, course scales, and the chronic look of torpor. Furthermore, micropterus salmoides is often associated with the jamborees of a high-speed, lip-ripping, glitter-boat flavor.
But they, along with their other warmwater cousins, are more than that. These fish are strong, cagey, and found in a much wider variety of ecosystems than the fragile trout. They will analyze a perfectly drifted nymph and turn their nose at a delicately floated dry fly.
These fish are more than substitutes or fall-backs.
Take a close look at this bass…then try to do the same by fly fishing for them this year!
Yes, time on the pond will give you a chance to improve your casting. You will have other fishing opportunities in the warmest months when it would otherwise be unwise to pursue trout. You will learn new things about fishing streamers and topwater patterns that you can bring with you on your next float trip. But bass are not the junior varsity team.
There is more in that smallmouth river or that farm pond than practice and alternatives.
Take the time to relax. Catching the biggest bluegill in the lake isn’t easy. Carp can be more finicky than spring creek browns. But there is something inherently chill about casting a popper or bouncing a crayfish. Chill, at least, in comparison to the approach many people take to the trout stream. Allow yourself to unwind. Grab your slowest rod and allow a pumpkinseed to give it a bend that rivals any trout under fourteen inches.
Then, when you’ve spooked the largest fish or that one fish you can make plans to come back and try to best her. For most anglers, the lure of fishing is a combination of hunting and a problem solving. The quarry is inconsequential. The challenge has the hook.
In addition, you’re forming a more holistic picture. That is true of seeing the greater angling world, yes. What do other people see, hear, smell, and catch? More importantly, you’re getting to see what is downstream. Any conservation efforts up in the cold headwaters have an impact on the warmer rivers they flow into. The slow, broad river is the ultimate destination of the water flowing in your mountain creek. The reedy pond only exists because of the brook that brings clean water into it.
Healthy trout help healthy bass.
Healthy anglers often get hooked by the challenge of a fish more than only that one fish. When you allow a pickerel, a perch, and even something called a “bigmouth buffalo” become your task, all that matters is being in the right place, at the right time, with the right fly. And there is no substitute for that.
Read more of “The Pursuit of Fish” blog HERE