That is just how we fished

I started catching bass on a fly rod when I was a kid. Dad taught me how to cast. Growing up in southern Indiana I didn’t know too many other fly fishermen, but it was just how we fished.

Eventually I moved out West where everybody, it seemed, used a fly rod, and I traded bass for trout. For years, I didn’t fish for anything else. I caught cutthroats in Yellowstone Park, brookies in the Beartooths, and pulled rainbows and browns from the Yellowstone River.

Moving from the mountains to the prairie about a dozen years ago, I learned to fish for walleye and pike in the big reservoirs, including Ft. Peck.

I also reacquainted myself with largemouth bass, stocked by the state in many of the small ponds and reservoirs that dot the treeless landscape up here.

Unfortunately, those smaller waters are vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature. Last winter took a toll, killing off the bass in most of my favorite ponds.

One little lake, however, somehow survived winter’s wrath. A friend told me he’d heard they were still catching bass there and we gave it a try last week.

I started out fishing a spinner, thinking the fish would be deep. They weren’t. I was in my kayak and I quickly worked the pond from one end to the other. I had two strikes and missed both.

But fish were feeding at the edge of the grass, and after trading the spinning rod for a fly rod I started to get into them – strong, heavy bass that put an impressive bow in my rod.

They were eating my gaudy streamer with relish.

As fun as they were to catch there was no hooting or hollering involved. I am a quiet angler, the result perhaps, of many evening as a youth spent trespassing on private ponds.

I’d usually slink in right before dusk to the most inaccessible water and begin casting to rising fish. That last magic hour of the day remains my favorite time to fish. It also enabled me to escape in the dark.

I never got caught, and I seldom kept any fish, the strike, the fight and the release were all I needed.

It still is, most of the time, but last week I took a limit home and we ate them last night.

It’s hard to beat bass on a fly rod.

Or a plate.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].