Murky water bass find splashy lures

BONAPARTE - Jim Ketchum of Robins knows how to pique an angler's interest.

When he invited me to accompany him on a visit to a southern Iowa farm pond, he attached to his email a recent photo of a 2-foot-long largemouth bass.

I don't care where you're from, that's a big bass, and Jim said there were plenty more naive brutes in the seldom-fished 6-acre pond.

The only problem, he said, is that heavy rains, which have been common this spring across southern Iowa, “turn the pond to chocolate milk.”

After a deluge washed out our first planned visit, we went last weekend, even though we suspected that murky water would somewhat limit our options and success.

Our first view of the pond's cloudy water confirmed our fear, but we took comfort in the knowledge that the bass could not leave in search of clearer water and in the hope we could make them bite.

After the failure of our initial effort to catch them on jigs and plastic worms, we switched to lures with flash, sound and vibration.

A spinner bait with big pulsating blades attracted our first lunker, a 21-inch largemouth that leapt entirely out of the water on its way to Jim's paddle-powered boat.

The spinner bait later caught two more bigheaded sky walkers, one measuring 18 inches, the other 19.

Top-water poppers and vibrating crankbaits also caught both bass and crappies, and Jim took me back to my youth when he caught a 20-inch bass on a night crawler suspended beneath a bobber.

As Jim had intimated, we eventually got our chance to catch a 2-footer.

After initial rock solid resistance, the big fish felt like it was coming my way. Rather than loosen my drag or flip my spinning reel into back-crank mode, I hauled back on the rod and applied maximum pressure, fully expecting the fish to jump out of the water like all the other largemouth bass we'd caught.

Instead, the fish stayed deep, defying my feeble attempt to horse it toward the boat, disabusing me of my belief that I had the upper hand.

Before I could adjust, the powerful fish did a 180 and surged away from the boat, swimming away with my spinner bait while I disconsolately reeled in my slack line.