Pond fishing - 11/11/09

One of the only good things about being a banker these days is the bank holidays!  With Veterans Day off and not much to do around the house I decided I was going to be on a shoreline somewhere.  I was able to get permission to visit a pond I've fished before in the DeSoto, Kansas area and it was one of the best pond fishing days I've ever had.  The pond I was going to fish had aquatic vegetation growing from the shoreline to about 10ft out and was littered with brushpiles, laydowns, and cedar trees planted by the owner.  These 2 types of primary cover are extremely common in ponds around the Midwest and hopefully you can take some of this and apply it to your next fall fishing trip in a pond.  

I usually bring 3-4 rods with me when I pond fish.  On 2 of them I will rig up a reactionary/moving bait like a spinnerbait, swimbait, shallow crankbait, or lipless crankbait (depending on the time of year I might rig up a topwater like a popper or a buzzbait), and I’ll rig drop baits on the other 2.  Here’s what I had tied on when I pulled up to the water...

Basstrix Paddle-Tail Tube (swimbait) in Chartreuse Shad color…I started out by the stretch of sand that doubles as a boat ramp and went down the shore towards the headwater of the pond.  I didn’t have any takers on the swimbait and eventually switched to a spinnerbait.  A swimbait like this might work in a pond, but the only ones I have are in a shad pattern.  But there aren’t shad in the pond so a bluegill pattern would probably be way more appropriate.  I just wanted to throw it because I was in the mood for the vicious strikes that a swimbait can produce.

After making fan casts with the swimbait, I’ll usually fish the drop baits like a jig or Texas-rigged plastic, or a shaky-head.  In most ponds, you want to fish parallel to the shoreline and avoid the middle of the pond because it's usually nothing but a dead sea.  Pond fish can go an entire year without leaving the safety of the cover on the bank.  However, if you know there's fish holding structure in the middle it's worth casting to.  The Texas-rigged plastic I started off with was a Zoom Baby Brush Hog in the Okeechobee Craw color.  The blue flake in this bait does a decent job of mimicking a bluegill, and bluegill and crawfish are usually the primary forage a bass that lives in a pond.  Sometimes they will feed on yearling bass so after the spawn a baby bass-colored lure will also do the trick. 

I caught keeper #1 (3.5lbs) about 20yds down the shore from my starting point on the baby brush hog.  I fished the brush hog all the way to to the corner where the creek feeds in and only had that one bite.  The water was dirtier than I thought it would be (maybe 6” of clarity) and it got dirtier as I worked towards that end of the pond.  I couldn't remember any recent rains but he conditions were the conditions and I had to make a change.  I needed a more visible color and more vibration…the bass would be able to see black and chartreuse hues in that muddy water and they would be able to feel the vibration better with their lateral line.  I clipped the brush hog off my line and rigged up a jig.

A 3/8oz Jewel Bait Eakins' Flip'n jig in their Missouri Craw pattern got the nod and I paired it with a NetBait Paca Chunk trailer in green pumpkin.  The claws of this trailer displace a ton of water, the top set of strands are black, there’s a little chartreuse in there…when rigged on 20lb fluorocarbon in muddy water it’s a killer set-up.  I have a ton of confidence in it and for a good reason…I flipped it along some sawgrass that was hanging over the water near the back of the pond and I stuck keeper #2…5lbs.  I fished down the shore to a little point (where you can cast to a cedar tree in the middle) and stuck keeper #3…4lbs…sitting on the end of the point in the bank grass.  By this point I had put down the shaky-head.  It’s more of a clear water thing…you can fish a creature bait like a baby brush hog on a shaky-head but I usually fish this set-up on 8lb fluorocarbon...if I hooked something on it, there was no way I would be able to pull it through all of that bank grass.  My 7’6” Heavy ActionG-Loomis flipping rod w/20lb Seaguar Fluorocarbon was going to be married to my hand for the rest of the day.  I had also clipped off the swimbait and tied on a 3/8oz white/chartreuse War Eagle spinnerbait…they’re usually meant to mimic shad but b/c of the vibration, flash, and color they still work well in a pond.  I had thrown this spinnerbait past the 5-pounder and 4-pounder maybe 5 times and neither of them ate it.  But a flip of the jig got a bite on the first cast.

I chucked the spinnerbait way out there and when I pulled it past the left side of the cedar tree I caught keeper #4…3lbs.  For some reason I didn’t take a picture of this one.  I fished the hell out of all of the brush that was within casting distance and this was the ONLY fish that wasn’t on the bank.  I kept going all the way to the dam.  I had fished all the way to the spillway-side corner and didn’t have a bite for maybe an hour or so.  I was trying to get that 5^thfish and it was getting kind of frustrating.  I was on the dam in the spillway corner, threw the spinnerbait along the bank grass to the right, and saw my 5^thkeeper come up and flash on the bait but he didn’t hook up.  I flipped the jig back to the grass he came out of about 10 times but didn’t get him to bite again.  I threw the spinnerbait into the spillway-side corner on my left, turned the crank about 3 times and a 2.5lb keeper just about knocked the rod out of my hands…that was my limit fish and by my math I had about 18lbs.  That was a pretty good total for 5 fish, but I wanted to cull up and get rid of that little 2.5-pounder. 

I walked up through the grass, clipped off my jig, and I tied on a Texas-rigged Zoom Brush Hog (bigger than the one I was using before).  The baby size brush hog is maybe 4” and the regular brush hog is probably closer to 7” in length.  It’s a big, bulky bait, and it catches bigger fish than that little jig I was using.  The only color I had with me was Watermelon/Purple which wasn’t ideal, but I figured the bulk and the big appendages would make up for the color.  I usually carry a dye marker so I can change the color of a bait when I don't have what I need but somehow the marker didn't make it into my tackle box when I was packing.

I walked across the spillway to a little point that jetted out towards the dam.  I flipped into the bank grass in the corner as the owner was walking down the driveway, and he hollers to me, “I’ve heard that’s a pretty good spot!”  I said, “Oh yeah?”  After I answered him I looked back at my line and it was zipping out towards open water.  I slammed a hook into keeper #6 and flipped him up onto the shore.  This was my big fish of the day…5.5lbs easily.  This fish was so big it put a little bend in my 5/0 Gamakatsu hook when I horsed it onto the shore.  If you get rid of the 2.5-pounder that put me at 21lbs for the day which is freakin’ outstanding for the middle of November with a high-pressure weather front and blue bird skies.

For pictures of all of the fish I caught yesterday make sure out the photo gallery.  

A big lesson I learned yesterday…try to catch the fish closest you first.  If you fire off a long cast with a spinnerbait, that fish is going to cause a commotion in the cover that’s right in front of your feet and you’ll spook any fish that might be sitting in that grass.  If you catch the fish closest to you first, you can go back later and cast to the fish that are further away without worrying about disturbing anything when you reel them in.  You can use the same principal when you're picking apart a piece of structure on a boat.  If you fish close and catch a fish, then fish far and catch another, you know you've done the right thing!

www.petemathews.com

Follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/petemathews

Pictures of the baits used were taken from TackleWarehouse.com