Top Water in the Reed Beds
It’s no mystery, it happens to all serious fishing folk this time of year; they go fishing. When you are locked up in hard water and crummy weather for most of the year it’s hard to resist the urge to do nothing but fish 24/7 when the weather finally favors your favorite piscatorial pursuits. So for the better part of July and continuing on now into August we are fishing like we’re possessed; not far from the truth actually.
So, to backtrack a little on what’s been going on around here. In mid July we fished Montana’s Noxon reservoir. My youngest son Drew is in the Flathead chapter Jr. Bassmasters and their first of two tourney’s took place there. He won first place there in his age group. Fishing was tough for the kids but for us non contestants it was pretty good going, nothing really big but lots of action.
For the next couple of weeks we fished the local warm water haunts around here locally and tried to get tuned in for the next tourney event at Echo Lake near Bigfork. Lots of water and what seems like cooler conditions overall seemed to have put the fish in some different locales and moods in many places. At the end of July the weather started to warm up and the top water action finally really seemed to take off.
Finally, the Echo lake tourney went off the last weekend of the July. Pre-fish day was a skunk (I can’t remember the last time the kid got skunked) but again they said they were saving the “honey holes” for tournament day so I guess that’s as good of excuse as any. Fortunately, we have a lot of good guys around to keep the kids from getting to despondent and the long faces didn’t last long. On game day I dropped the bass Ninja off with his team mate and boater and headed home to knock off some work on the deck that I was behind on while they were fishing. I could not have been more wound up if I was watching a last minute drive during a Super Bowl game. Finally about mid morning I got a text message with a picture attached.
19.5 inch Montana Largemouth
His lead off fish for the day was a 19.5 inch Largemouth. How sweet was that? It was downhill running after that with two 16 and two 14 inch fish. He won first again in his age group, biggest fish of the day and combined with the Noxon trip, won a trip to divisionals in New Mexico next spring. Pretty heady stuff for a 13 year old. We are of course proud of our aspiring Bassmaster and owe a big thank you to Mark Newman and the Flathead Jr. Bassmaster group. It’s playing hell on my trout fishing though. I’m not sure I’d recognize one these days.
Are Perch aquatic decendants of the Romulans?
For the last two weeks it’s been lights out top water fishing for bass and pike. I’ve been tying foam creatures, mostly frogs, trying to work out a decent frog popper that:
1) stays right side up no matter what
2) is impervious to weeds of all kinds
3) withstands the thrashing from a bass
4) and the gnashing teeth of a pike
I learn something new every time I throw some kind of little pattern tweak out there. It’s grueling field testing but someone has to do it.
