A day with ‘boozhing’ bass

It was a lovely spring day for all but the minnows, who found themselves in a pickle.

Maple spinners fluttered down like confetti. A cold-blooded water snake absorbed the warmth of a sun-drenched rock.

Fish surfaced often in the current-riled water just off the river bank — the pretty tails of the red horse sucker, the mast-like dorsal fins of the quillback carpsucker, the green-gold flanks of the smallmouth bass.

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They were all there to partake of the minnows pinned between them and the shore or to participate in the associated frenzy.

Dense schools of 3-inch minnows crowded the shallow edge of the river, driven there by fish aggressively trying to eat them. At times they boiled from the water like they’d been jolted by electric current. At other times they’d swarm ashore, hopping about like Vedic levitators, apparently preferring the oxygenless perils of dry land where grackles pecked at them to the certain, violent death lurking in the water.

Oh boy, boozhing bass, I thought to myself.

My friend and mentor Steve Harty of Marion, a master of bass fishing and colorful language with a flare for onomatopoeia, coined the word to describe a surface feeding frenzy, as in, “The bass are boozhing on shad.”

(The word is so original that the artificial intelligence overseeing my work insists on changing it to “boozing” or “boxing.”)

Never brag about catching boozhing bass, Steve advised, because it’s too easy and everyone is doing it. I’m not bragging — just reporting what happened.

I happened to have a 3-inch Keitech Easy Shiner threaded onto a 3/32-ounce tungsten jig tied to the end of my string (as I do about 95 percent of my time on the water).

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I’m confident ravening smallmouth bass cannot tell the difference between real minnows and Easy Shiners. I further believe that if they could they would prefer the Keitech imitation, which is as lifelike as a real minnow with a more appetizing scent. (Full disclosure: I get no promotional consideration for mentioning Keitech products. I do so solely to help readers catch more fish.)

Of course, as anyone who’s had the pleasure of casting to boozhing bass will tell you, any lure will do.

Bass of all sizes, including several nice ones, beat up on the plastic minnow until it would no longer stay on the hook. Casts that didn’t hook bass foul-hooked quillback and sucker, who I suspect joined the melee more for the contagious frenzy than for the minnows.

I concentrated on staying calm and catching fish, but when I finally quit — breathing rapidly, pulse rate elevated, dampened with sweat on a cool morning — I have to admit I might have gotten a little frenzied myself.