The green and white Hula-Popper — a large floating plug with a plastic skirt — hit the surface of the small pond with a splash. I let the circle of a small wave drift away, counting until 10, and then jerked the rod.
With each splash of the surface water, the popper imitated a frog hastening its way along the shoreline.
A few seconds later, there was a violent eruption on the pond’s surface as a largemouth bass inhaled the plug. I quickly set the hook and the bass took the plug down into the water’s depths. The line on my drag — which allows the line to be drawn out by the fish, thereby not allowing it to break — sang out and I set the hook once more.
Then the bass came completely out of the water, shaking his head back and forth in an attempt to free the treble hook, lodged in its jaw.
It dove to several feet and emerged two more times, up clear from the surface and shaking its head again, then began to tire. I reeled the fish in and, leaning over slightly in the canoe, removed the hook. I grabbed the fish by the lower jaw and lifted her to the canoe, admiring her color and size. A female, without a doubt, her belly swelled with the eggs that would be soon laid.
I marveled at the sheer size of the bass, then holding her under my left hand, gently moved her back and forth six inches in the water. A moment later, she regained her composure and bolted away.
Welcome to the world of bass, in this case the largemouth bass, one of the most aggressive — and one of the most common — game fishes found in the lakes and ponds of Vermont.
Shawn Good, a fisheries biologist with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, is an avid bass fisherman. As a member of the Rutland BASS Club, Good fishes a local tournament trail and is clearly impressed with the fighting abilities and the numbers of bass — both the largemouth and smallmouth variety — found in the Green Mountain State.
“They’re found everywhere, so they’re readily available,” he says.
While northern pike, walleyes and brown, brook, rainbow and lake trout are favored fish among Vermont’s fishing fraternity, Good says that he believes bass bring a special quality to angling.
“What sets them apart,” Good says, “is the way they hit. They are an aggressive, predatory fish and they bite hard.”
Largemouth bass are plentiful in almost any lake or pond in Vermont and the smaller ones — those 2 pounds and under — come easily to the hook, according to Good.
“You can go out and catch small bass,” he says. “They’re easy to catch.”
But the larger largemouth bass, the ones that weigh in at 3, 4, 5 pounds or more, are a different story, Good says.
Those big largemouths are what Good and his fellow anglers on the tournament trail — speeding from one place to the next from high-tech, specially-equipped bass boats — are looking to find and catch.
“They’re such a challenge,” Good says. “You have to be a very adaptable, well-rounded angler. What works one day on the water may not work the next day. Bass change their habits, moods and feeding preferences daily.”
These fishermen use worms, crayfish and large minnows to stalk bass. And bait anglers who know how to fish for big bass with live bait reel in fish that weigh in a hefty 6 or 7 pounds every year.
Ice fishermen also get their share of bass. In fact, the state record largemouth came through the ice on Lake Dunmore in January 1988. Caught by Tony Gale, the bass weight in at a whopping 10 pounds, 4 ounces.
The smallmouth record, meanwhile, stands at 6 pounds, 12 ounces. It was reeled in by Issac Spaulding, on Lake Eden, in September 2003.
Those lonely largemouth days
While bass fishing is big business in Vermont today, there was a time, back in the late 1970s and ‘80s, when an angler could set out on the opening day of bass season and fish one big pond after the next and never see another angler.
I’ve been a bass fisherman for more than 50 years. I got hooked on the sport one morning while fishing with a worm and bobber on a New Jersey farm pond. I was probably 10 years old. A bass hit my bait and I will never forget what happened next. It was one of those really big, red and white bobbers and I looked on as the bobber was taken deeper and deeper into the water — until it literally vanished.
I had never caught a fish that fought so well. Years later, after I settled in Vermont, I was stunned to find that Vermont anglers just didn’t get excited about bass fishing.
Trout fishing ruled back then. Not anymore.
I believe that, today, you could make a good argument that bass fishing is far and away more popular than that sacred Vermont fish — trout.
Bass are “pretty ubiquitous and found in most bodies of water across the state and country,” says Good.
But another nice thing about largemouth and smallmouth bass, according to Good, is how available they are.
“You can go out and catch them with a worm and bobber,” he says. “They are readily available and readily accessible to anglers of all skill levels.”
Largemouth bass, also called “bucketmouths,” are so called for obvious reasons. I can generally tell if a largemouth exceeds that magical 5-pound category by literally fitting my fist into its mouth.
A smallmouth bass doesn’t actually have a small mouth — just a bit smaller than his largemouth cousin.
But there is another striking difference between these two challenging game fish.
Fishing from my small, 15-foot boat that lacks any of the high-tech stuff found on the boats of my brother tournament anglers, a few years back I hooked into a fish with a deep-running plug. It fought like the dickens and I knew, at once, that this was no largemouth on the line.
Running under the boat, it bent my rod nearly 90 degrees downward. I played the fish, carefully, but a moment later, it had slipped off the hook.
It was clearly a smallmouth, perhaps one that weighed up to 5 pounds. Of course, I can never know.
While largemouth bass are known for their aggressive nature, particularly in the manner in which they attack bait and for their acrobatics, they cannot compare — pound for pound — with the smallmouth bass.
Good knows all about the differences between these two related fish.
“A smallmouth bass blows away a largemouth bass in terms of how much fun they are to catch … how hard they fight,” Good says. “Catch a 2-pound smallmouth and you’ll have more fun landing him than a 4 or 5-pound largemouth.”
Larger smallmouths are easier to catch on a regular basis that the bigger largemouth bass, Good says.
“You have to hunt them down, go through every lure in your tackle box, if you want to get into largemouth bass.”
The Vermont bass season opens June 11.
While, every year, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department stocks rivers, lakes and ponds with hundreds of thousands of hatchery trout, not one body of water is stocked with bass.
Bass were born here, baby. Considered the top predator in most bodies of water, they offer a great fight and, filleted, a 1 or 2-pound bass tastes great off the grill.
Dennis Jensen is the outdoor editor for the Barre Times Argus and the Rutland Herald and a member of the board of directors of the New England Outdoor Writers Association.
