When catching bass becomes boring

LANSING – When the largemouth bass crowd into their winter quarters, you can hardly cast a lure that won't land on one of them.

Dave Patterson of Atkins and I caught one every three minutes during the 15 hours we spent last week fishing in pool 9 of the Mississippi River.

With the wind howling much of the time, threatening twice to shove our boat aground on backwater islands and whipping up whitecaps on municipal sewage lagoons, it took us all week to accrue that much time on the water. But that was all right: By the time we had finished, we had both tired of an activity too easy to be considered sport.

First it was, “Ho hum, another bass.” Then it was, “Ho hum, another double.” Then, “Ho hum, another 3-pounder.” Finally, it was two bass on the same lure at the same time.

When winter approaches, river–dwelling largemouth bass and other centrarchids like bluegills and crappies head for deeper water with little if any current where they can survive their annual dormancy with minimal expenditure of energy.

Such preferred spots are easily identified by the fleets of boats piloted by anglers in pursuit of panfish. Even on weekdays, the bays and sloughs we frequented were jammed with anglers who are either retired or know how to get a day off when the fish are biting.

Perhaps because they are present in such heavy concentrations, the bass are likely to be anywhere – in all the so-called good spots such as rocky banks, around submerged wood and in the remnants of aquatic vegetation – but also in marginal habitat like shallow mudflats.

During our five days on the river, the water temperature dropped from 56 to 48 degrees, but the intense cold front did nothing to curtail the fishes' appetite. Though they did not seem to be chasing our crankbaits, rattletraps and spinnerbaits, they were not allowing them to pass unmolested either.

The smallmouths, which make up as much as 40 percent of the Upper Mississippi's bass population, apparently have much less need for still water in the late fall and early winter. All 305 bass we caught were largemouths.

Dave, who enjoys the challenge of finding bass and figuring out what if anything they will bite, reached his satiation point sooner than I, once all the mystery had been removed from the endeavor.

But even I, who for most of my life has felt starved for fish contact, eventually tired of the predictable toink and tussle that followed nearly every other cast.