Mud Bass on the Shorebang

It looks like The City took over another one of my fishing spots. This place took me five years to get permission from the homeowners to launch my tooner on it. In exchange I would do a Mattsabasser trash haul once a year while expressing only respect when out there. Only a small portion of the lake was public access and that access was from shoreline only. I had heard that The City wanted more control but there was no follow up on my part. Roll the dice and pull the truck up on the place one weekend to discover that a lot indeed had changed.

(Above: First fish pulled out of weed cover. This is a fish with a side of salad picture.)

“You can’t take that boat on here.” A young poindexter immediately barks out as I approach with boat in tow.

After some discussion I choose not to launch and made a call to the homeowner leaving a voicemail. Eventually I did find out that boat access has been removed even from the landowners. This is heartbreaking as it took me so long to get that access on a privileged section of the water.

“It looks like this place is a shorebang situation from here on out.” I scoff in sadness and remembrance of years that have passed. “That figures.”

(Above: Respectable fin slapper. In previous years this would be a good skunk-beater or something that kept the action going between much larger fish. This year it was my best fish of the day.)

The ditch company isn’t paying for water shares from this drainage and or routing water from other sources. Instead of water fluctuations up and down, the pond loses a foot of depth every year. This and other factors hurt the system in so many ways. The City could put water in there and make the situation almost as good as it was but they won’t. Most of the shoreline is a muddish-like quicksand that smells from decades of wet decomposition.

(Above: Last fish picked out of the mudhole and I had to go in and get him costing me a pair of shoes.)

The same thing happened to another one of my favorite fishing places when The City took over. The fishing oasis that I had worked so hard to get access was turned over to the public in a similar fashion. Bad things happened and in a few short years the whole place was drained. The place was turned to mud. The only saving grace is the fact I am always looking for new water and I still managed to C&R a few fish out of this one.

The lure of the day was a 5 inch Yamamoto twin tail grub in watermelon flake. Every lake is different but this particular body of water has a lot of weeds and algae that limit some of my other gear options. It also sports a lot of frogs that the bass love to hammer. I throw this twin tail grub weightless on the heavy stuff and might slap on a 1/8oz or 1/4oz weight in less cover. A 2/0 extra wide gap hook or even worm style gets me a few more hooksets than the plastic frogs with the two prong hook setup.

My name is Matt and I’m a fishaholic.