The takeout was a dirt ramp. We had permission but I’m not sure why. Up above there was a collection of single-wides, derelict RV’s, rusted farm implements, and a Glastron ski boat on blocks.

When there came a godawful squealing we thought the winch on the trailer had seized up. We stopped cranking and listened and the sound was coming from up the hill. Just then a man came down the ramp with wild hair and bib overalls and half of his uppers.

“How’d y’all do?”

“Good!”

“Bass or catfish?”

“All bass.”

“White’uns or them regulars?”

“Regulars.”

“Crawdads?”

“No, flies?”

He tugged at his asscrack and pondered that and then he went on about he and his boy and a mess of yella cats they’d caught awhile back. When the squealing started again we turned and looked up the hill, and then back at him.

“What’s all that racket?”

“Dinner.”

“Your dinner?”

“Yeah. We got up on a hog.”

Believed in some primitive cultures to contain properties similar to sildenafil.

This, believe it or not, is the headwaters of the Everglades.

I come back from Florida and people sound incredulous about it. You fished for what? Not tarpon? But I am, after all, a working man, and the bass is that fish.

I’ve fished out of Clewiston on rocket boats from Mr. Martin’s marina, but there’s more to it than the great lake. The largemouth bass in Florida are like Led Zeppelin on the radio, always on somewhere.

The canal by the hotel, the pond by the cell phone waiting area at the airport, the creek that starts the freshwater flow south to Florida Bay. Something will be forthcoming, with big fat slobbery paydirt.

The Hudson bass have an edge to them, seeing as they survived 30 plus years of General Electric trying to kill the river with polychlorinated biphenyl. When they start rolling in the early season into the tidal creeks and mud flats, the hibernation is over.

The Chesapeake bass had it in a bad way this winter, with 10 tons worth strangled in the poaching incident we know about, but the Hudson bass keep coming. As John Waldman wrote in his book Heartbeats in the Muck, “The population was conserved through the inadvisability of its consumption.”

I’ve seen people keep city fish. I bet they don’t realize the extra zing in the meat comes courtesy of the people who made their toaster oven.

This is a bridge and tunnel crowd. One of the guys here took the subway then the bus and walked the last stretch along the street in his boots and waders. It’s spring, time for everybody to do what they do.

Gamakatsu shiner hook
dark green rabbit
light green rabbit
3D eyes w/shoo goo
tungsten bead
50lb hard mono

“…you have to know what’s in the box.”

Down yonder south the bubbas have always known that nothing draws ole bucketmouth out of the dark and weedy like a lip hooked live shiner.

I swear, I didn’t do this

Associated Press – November 24, 2010 6:04 AM ET

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) – Arizona Game and Fish is offering a reward that leads to the arrest of those responsible for dumping a nonnative fish into Yuma area canals recently.

Adult peacock bass were found in the Welton-Mohawk canal system in southwest Arizona.

Have some, Mike Iaconelli.

 Sucka MC’s,

Check out the $3.76 worth of saltwater/bass fly tying material I purchased from the Christmas clearance rack of my local home-improvement-do-it-yourself-and-get-busy mega store. Tis the season and git to tying.

The bass are content to inhale whatever leech or snail or larva locates itself within range. Thusly they feed, so often as to be uneventful. Such fish cannot be bothered to rise so far as the surface, not even for a morsel as large and succulent as a frog or a woefully rendered imitation thereof.  The disposition of this fish does not lend itself to game.

Fishing is slow.

Props to the soul rollin’ bastige Kevin Price for perverting Xtranormal into a flyfishing advertisment i actually don’t feel stupider for seeing.

Click on the area below to play…

Got some sorta Xtranormal Kung-Fu that you think’s piss-your-pants funny? We’ll be the judge of that, buddy.Send it to bacon@busterwantstofish.com and we’ll plaster it up at our little lame-ass site here.

I hadn’t seen KB in quite sometime. He’s a college buddy of mine and one of the nicest fellas you’ll ever meet. I once sold him my parent’s old living room couch for a 12 pack of Coors Leaded. I think he slept on it for 6 months till he got motivated enough and bought a bed. I heard around the middle of June that KB had testicular cancer and was starting chemo. I wasted no time and called his cell. We traded voicemails for a day and then contact was made. I took about a minute and I asked him to fish. “Well, Scott, I’m going to be doing chemo for awhile. I don’t know when I’ll be able to fish, but I think about fishing everytime I’m laid up at the hospital. It’s something I plan on doing a lot of when I beat this disease.” I told him we’d go as soon as felt up to it. A plan was made to go on a late August Saturday between chemo cycles.  

 Alabama summers are brutal, but that day was the first since the late Spring/early Summer since we had temps in the 80′s with tolerable humidity. It was one of those days were it’s just a honor to be outside. I sat in the middle of the boat most of that morning with a shit-eating grin on my face. I was watching two of my best friends catch big bass after big bass and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. We fished till about lunch when KB let us know he was gassed and ready to head back. I could tell it pissed him off that this disease was forcing us to end our time on the water that day. He didn’t say much on the ride home. I dropped him off at the house and he made a beeline for the bed.

I’m happy to report that KB recently finished up chemo, but still has quite a fight on his hands. I know he’ll pull through. He’s got a lot to live for with a wonderful wife and two kids under 4 years old. And plenty of future fishing trips. We’re already talking about Montana/Wyoming/Idaho next Summer. I cannot wait. Kick that ass, KB. Kick that ass.

bass water

I know they’re in here.  I drop the anchor in a spot where I can cast to a piling, a sunken log, overhanging branches, a weed bed and that mysterious looking dark hole up against the bank.  I slowly work the fly through every piece of cover. Then pull the anchor, work the shoreline; paddle, anchor, cast, retrieve.  Nothing moves to the bug.  The sun’s long set when I drag the boat out of the pond. On the drive home I think about bass flies and what would have worked.

This prop-frog was inspired by Jim Stewart’s Buzz Bug.

From Flies For Bass And Panfish, Stewart and Allen, 1992.

Designed to mimic popular wood or plastic suface bass plugs.  When retrieved with short strips the propeller spays water and causes a surface disturbance.

You ever had your teeth kicked in by your favorite local flow time and time again? Or the lake keeps kicking your ass no matter what you fish with and what time of day? Or the Gulf keeps producing rough seas, terrible weather, and you have to turn around and head back home limping? Watch the right boot, son. Anytime the above starts happening I usually curl up into a ball for an hour and then hit one of several farm ponds that are within 15 minutes drive from the casa. And I know what will happen. A-U-T-omatic. There’s one pond in particular that I call on, frequently. She always answers the phone and gives it up shortly. I don’t call any buddies and invite them along. I quietly get in the truck and mosey on down to her place….kinda looking around as I get out of the car. A couple casts in I start catching fish it seems like on every cast. I almost feel guilty about it, but hey, a fella’s gotta get his every now and then.

Farm ponds have an inner beauty that draws you to them. You remember every little positive feature about them. My favorite pond has a little footbridge for the livestock. The bass will bivouac on the rocks late in the day right beside and underneath that bridge. Then there’s that big rock you can stand on, from the far bank, that gives you a great cast either side of it down the bank. It’s absolutely perfectly for a slow retrieve with a popper or stealth bomber. Then you can cast a weighted bugger down by the damn and hookup time and time again. Like I said, you know what’s coming, and you still love it anyway.

You wouldn’t want to fish farm ponds all year long and nothing else. You want a little challenge. You want the chase, the unknown. You give the big girl a call when the well runs dry and you’re in a slump. She’s there for you and she asks nothing in return, except maybe a visit a little more frequently.

“…I’ve come to realize that we love and venerate salmonids because they supposedly possess the traits that we’d like to ascribe to our own beings; sleekness, nobility, smarts, discernment and beauty. But the largemouth bass, with its pugnacity and straightforwardness, its big mouth, its lack of discrimination at the dinner table and the resultant bulge at the waist, just might be a more honest reflection…”

- Monte Burke, excerpted from his essay, “Bass Fishermen” in the Spring/Summer ’09 issue of The Drake, now available at finer literary establishments. Git some.

From our friends at Fly Talk comes this crazy ass pic:

(photo by Cliff Watts)

Yes, that’s a bird leg sticking out of a bass’s throat, and the beast still took a fly.

Read the story and more pics here.

black bass bug

An excellent strike getter is an all black popper with yellow dots all over it…
Black has always brought me plenty of strikes and yet there are probably fewer professionally made poppers in black than in any other color.

Joe Brooks, Fly Fishing

The sprang is almost here… just a few weeks away. About two, if I’m counting, here in teh Alabam. The bass will be in their pre-spawn frenzy and prolly haven’t taken a gander at a fly or lure in quite some time at the places I mostly frequent. That being said and all, I need to start getting my shit in order. I’ve started to go through boxes, organize flies, and get to tying things I’m desperately in need of….basically all the stuff you’re supposed to do in the winter time. Hunting season kinda gets in the way for me.

I’ve got an old arse Star Inflatable sitting in my garage that hasn’t seen water since October. And I’m really feeling like a looooser over this fact. Normally I would float a few places in North GA and Western NC this time of year and then start hitting my locals first of March. I need some help. Ol’ Big Blue, as we like to call her, has a bigass breach in her hull. It started two years ago when some old adhesive loosened. Then last Fall, the aforementioned October float, she came busting out the seams. I had a couple rolls of duct tape, in matching royal blue, to hide her cleavage till we could make it to the boat ramp. Anyway, I need some advice for anybody who specializes in hypalon magic. Like I said she’s an old girl, has a bladder system…so the repair wouldn’t have to be perfect. I just need some adhesive and/or some technique that will get the job done. I’ve tried two adhesives over the last few months that didn’t work. I’ll throw in some Buster swag and/or other goodies to whoever gives me some damn good advice and instruction. As always, smartassery will not be frowned upon.

Seriously, what’s better than this? And don’t blame the mutt for the spinning rod.

Photo from Danny F in Louisiana