"It’s late summer in Montana. A brown landscape stretches to the horizon, interspersed with fluorescent green fields of alfalfa that are nurtured by the Yellowstone River’s wonderful purity, deriving in part from the snowmelt up on the Beartooth Plateau. The purity even factors in naturally-occurring mercury, connected with Yellowstone Park and deeply-sourced volcanic emulsions. The mosquitoes have dried up, mostly. Monarchs, particularly attracted to Marsh Milkweed on floating islands, dodge and flit and largely avoid the undulating Cliff Swallows that hunt over the lake.
We only fish evenings and early morning now. Midday is given up to the relentless sun. Even dry heat can be relentless, and oppressive!
I look like a painter charged with handling the “pink” component of the Sistine Chapel, what with Caladryl ointment splotched across my arms and legs! Poison Hemlock and its incredibly persistent urusiol component, has complicated my routine. Regular machine washing of clothing doesn’t cut it. A vague Wikipedia reference suggests washing with bleach might help? I have visions of tie-dyed jeans, from way back in the ‘60s.
Early morning, predawn, is suppertime for bass. Five casts, four bass on. The fifth cast is extraordinary!
I loop a plastic leach into a backwater, and pensively wait for the twitch that signals a bass has sucked up the presentation. Sure enough, there it is. I slam the thirty pound, palomer knotted braided line armed with a straight shanked 3.0 hook, into the fish, and it surges! The water just boils at the site. I whoop, letting my canoe guide know that we are in business. The fight is on!
My rod bends over double as I pump and pump the fish, attempting to pull him over the top of the ubiquitous northern milfoil, a native, but comparable to its Eurasioan counterpart. If the fish gets its head into that mass of aquatic vegetation, it wins. The hook will tear out ninety percent of the time. If I can keep the fish above, on top, I might win. The water is frothy white, explosions of water on top, as the battle explodes! My partner has the presence of mind to have recognized a likely lure presentation. He had his phone camera going. The episode is being recorded.
I win that battle. The fish comes to hand after a short and forceful battle. But even my hands, massive hands, couldn’t pass around the girth of this fish.
We don’t have Florida largemouths here, in Montana. They don’t sustain through our winters. But we do have incredibly tough, powerful bullets of muscle. The northern largemouth is nothing if not aggressive. And the bass of Whiskey Bay, on Fish Fry Lake, are some kind of weird. They have the thick profile of healthy, heavy smallmouth bass, and it’s all muscle. A fourteen inch fish produces fillets that weigh a pound each.
But this gal won’t be filleted. She epitomizes what we hope for on Fish Fry Lake, a world class fishery. A place where people reconnect with natural forces. A place where learning occurs. Where water is fixed, and made healthy again.
I fished for an hour and a half. Caught eleven bass. Released five…the biggest. All the others were kept, processed, and contribute to the phosphorus cycling that’s critical to water. Fish are a form of nutrient hyper accumulator. And they are by far, the most enjoyable form of water quality enhancement I know of!
Негізгі бет Bruce Kania Catches Big Bass in Whiskey Bay (Fish Fry Lake). The fifth cast is extraordinary.....
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