Fishing the Bass Beds

This assignment was to write about an experience you'd had.

I can’t wait for the March full moon. It brings with it the start of the spawning season when the bass are on their beds. I’ve been anticipating this special season since last year after the amazing experience I had fishing it. After rigging up my rod and reel with a grape plastic worm and putting it, my four foot inner tube, board, rubber flippers, and tackle box in the truck, I headed to the lake at the University of North Florida. When I arrived, my hands were sweaty and my heart was already pounding in anticipation of what was to come.

I methodically took my weapons for the day out of the truck, tied the board to the inner tube, and went down to the waterfront. I placed the tube in the water slowly and carefully so as not to disturb the water, sat on the board with my legs through the middle of the tube, put the flippers on my feet, and weapons in hand, sought out the enemy. I slowly paddled my feet and started my search in the shallows around some lily pads.

Through the clear water I easily spotted a bed and approached quietly; then I saw her. In the water she appeared to be a good five pounds. She hadn’t noticed me, so I slowly lowered the plastic worm into the water and let it drop onto her bed. She swam by the worm a couple of times like a shark circling before its attack. The slight movement of my hand, which caused the worm to crawl in her bed, was the only thing that broke the rigidity of my body. I was tense and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I watched unwaveringly as she stealthily approached the worm, grabbed it in her mouth, let it go, and circled some more. It was a lifetime before she picked it up again. When she did, she started to carry it away from her bed.  Now was my chance!

I quickly flipped my wrist and set the hook in her mouth. She flew straight up out of the water, head shaking, trying to spit the hook. Somehow I managed to keep the line taught and started to reel her in as she dove back down into the water. While I was pulling her in, she pulled me and the tube around too. I don’t know who was fighting harder, her or me, but finally I got her up to the tube, grabbed her bottom lip, and lifted her out of the water.

She was three and 1/2 pounds, but had fought like a six pounder. As I took the hook out of her mouth and let her go, I realized that she wasn’t the only one that was hooked that day; she had hooked me too.

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