I can't catch bass on Slide Swimmers!

[FishDr]

...but now I'm up to three walleye on them!

 

A couple of friends and I went out for an extended night session last night and hit a couple of lakes along Colorado's Front Range (all within about 1.5 h of home).  The first lake was almost dead – one hit, one miss, but no other activity, and after spending two hours (and one 6" BBZ), we figured it was time for a move.  Before we move on though, I should provide a bit more information about the one hit.  We’d just walked down to the water and had taken the usual spacing (defined as how far apart two guys throwing swimbaits should be so that they can cast parallel to shore towards each other and not overlap casts – it’s a substantial distance).  I was on one end of the “line†and my swimbait-chucking friend was on the other, with the conventional gear guy in the middle (probably wondering why he kept having swimbaits drop in close to him).  My friend was throwing a Whopper Plopper and about 10 feet from shore, a fish swirled in and flat detonated on it.  It was loud enough that I heard the explosion, followed by the shout of surprise, and I was a good 75 – 100 yards away!  How the fish missed, we’ll never know, but it did, and after that, all was dead.  Not quite the first cast curse, but close, too close.  Of course, the lake could just hate us.

 

Anyway, after futilely flinging baits into the dark, we piled back into the truck and, driving with all the direction-finding ability of a schizophrenic homing pigeon, finally found ourselves on another lake that had a very spotty night fishing record, but that would at least offer us a chance for a bass or two.

 

The bass were very willing, pounding the 7" and Mini-Slammers my friend and I were throwing, while they also seemed to enjoy pouncing on the X-rap the other guy was flinging into the darkness.  The bass seemed to want the bait tight to shoreline clumps of rocks, and there were a decent number of blow-ups at knife-fighting range that kept our adrenaline levels rocking!  None of the bass I caught were big, but both of my friends got fish in the 18" range, which is decent for Colorado.

 

Like I said, the bass wanted baits tight to any rock clumps you could find along the shoreline, so there were some humorous moments as the traditional night-fishing "leap-frog" devolved into scrambles towards the next rock clump you could see in the very bright moonlight.  What I noticed, right after I lost a scramble, was that I was also getting hits perhaps 10 - 20 feet off shore, but they weren't hooking up.  I hypothesized (late at night I often do, sometimes aided by a cold beverage, sometimes not) that perhaps something subsurface and slow moving would attract the right sort of attention (the kind of attention my mother expressly warned me not to attract, whereas Dad, being a fisherman, would just smirk on the sidelines).  I switched to an Ayu-colored 175SS Slide Swimmer and started working it both close to the scattered rock clumps (‘cause I’ve never caught a bass on a Slide Swimmer and really want to) and on casts that quartered away from the shore.

 

Sometimes my aim was good, and I could go “parallel, quarter, parallel, quarterâ€, but on the cast in question, I might have been distracted, ‘cause I went somewhere between parallel and quarter – call it eighthed (it’s not a word, and I don’t care).  A half-dozen cranks into the retrieve the Slide Swimmer got thumped – not thumped with violence, just thumped.  I set the hook and saw and heard a splash as the fish reacted.  Interestingly, instead of thrashing and going aerial like the bass had been doing, this fish gave a couple of head shakes, and then poured on the coals and ran out and down.  WTF?  I leaned into the fish and tried to winch it in as I’d been doing to the bass – it didn’t work.  WTF?  I made the difficult mental switch from “crank the bass in†to “fight the fish†and started to work the fish in.  I made some headway and then it surged off again, this time pulling line off the reel (don’t you just love that crackling sound?).  What had I hooked?

 

I fumbled with my headlamp and, naturally, it came on with the low-intensity red light, so I fumbled a bit more and got the bright white light on.  Then, as I worked the fish into the beam, I got the surprise of the night – I had not hooked a big bass, I’d hooked a very respectably walleye.  I sort of kept my cool, though the volume of the running commentary to my friend increased.  He, by the way, was now hoofing it down the bank, trying not to face plant, courtesy of the scattered rock clumps.

 

I slid the fish into the shallows and pounced on it, not quite mindful of the sharp hooks but slightly mindful of the needle-sharp dorsal fin.  It got me anyway, but I got the fish!

 

 

As my friend rolled up, I measured the fish (27â€, and fat), and then we took a couple of pictures.  My first walleye of the fall, and a decent one at that.  She swam away strongly, and we worked along the shoreline for another 30 minutes or so, hoping for another fish.  We did pick up a couple more bass (or they did – I stuck with the Slide Swimmer and picked up nothing), but sometime on the dark side of midnight we figured we’d been out long enough.

 

It was a good night – I think we ended up with a dozen or more bass between the three of us and the one trophy walleye.

 

And I still can’t catch bass on a Slide Swimmer…

[northeast_trev]

Great looking Walleye. Nice work! You'll get a bass on it soon enough

[SwimbaitSam123]

That's a nice walleye! Great fish

[YELOSUB]

I could read your stories over and over!! Awesome catch, I would love to catch a walleye, especially one that size...Great report and thanks for sharing...

[flaswimbaiter]

One hell of a catch Doc, that's a big eye right there. You do really well out there with multispecies. I didn't have much luck with the 250' either, I have one mullet colored one left to use for snook. Hopefully it will get me a PB, but I doubt it.

[bassbass]

Monster walleye..Congrats

[Rogervang]

GIANT! nice one Doc! great story once again.

[4foreverfishing]

Try fishing early morning you'll get one. Nice walleye

[basshole8190]

Thats a really nice Walleye Doc!

[chrisramirez]

big fish. Congratulations!

[FishDr]

Try fishing early morning you'll get one. Nice walleye

I've tried, I've tried!  I guess I need to spend more time fishing by day, but I am so much happier when it's dark outside!

Edited October 19, 2015 by FishDr

[JAbee]

I felt as I was with you the whole time while reading your post. Thanks for the ride along and congrats.

[LUV-2-CATCH'EM]

Really nice fish there!

[floridaswimb8er]

^{Nice wally!!}

[derds126]

That's a trophy man! Congrats. Did you happen to get a water temp when you were out? There's a similar pattern in the fall in my area where giant walleye move shallow.