Backwater Casting Show Four
Well, if you have been watching the show, you know I have been taking a pretty regular beating from the back of the boat by my guests. I figured the best way to cure that little problem was to hit the water by myself and be assured that the count would work out better. The things a guy has to do.
Shawn loaded up the Rogers TV truck and I got the Sierra hooked up to the boat and off we went to the Benton Headpond which is located on the upper end of Eel River. This is an impoundment created by a very low dam on the river itself. I’m not sure if Ducks Unlimited put in the dam but this is a DU watershed. If you are a bird watcher there was no shortage the day we were here.
If you have never been to Benton before, let me say that most of it is very shallow with a very distinct channel running through the middle of it. When you launch, idle across the face of the dam and the channel is on that side. It has reasonably deep water in it but the transition from deep to shallow is very abrupt so stay in the channel when running and go slow.
The last time I was here, Glen Hunter and I caught some really nice Chain Pickerel while bass fishing so it seemed like a great place to do a show. Maybe having Glen in the boat was the secret because the big ones were gone and I caught a bunch of the “hammer handle’ variety. No monsters but the action was pretty much nonstop all day. I even convinced my producer Shawn to pick up a rod for a while when we stopped for lunch. The problem with that is it is hard to go back to filming when you have been catching but he’s a pro and the camera was up and running again in short order.
I must admit I was a bit baffled by the absence of bigger fish. Changing tactics and locations didn’t seem to change anything. I got the boat up on the shallow flats and fished everything from a couple of inches deep all the way back out into the main channel in twenty feet with very little difference in size. The bulk of the fish that were caught were very close to the channel edge but up on the shallow side. Very few fish were caught at any distance from the channel. We covered a lot of water today looking for the big ones and caught lots of fish along the way including a couple of decent Smallies and Yellow Perch.
Most of the fish were caught on Zoom Horny Toads rigged with a 5/0 Gamakatsu hook. We also got some on soft stick baits and spinnerbaits. I was using 2500 series Stradics spooled with 20Lb test Power Pro and Medium Heavy Compre rods for the soft plastics.
For the big half ounce Terminator spinnerbaits I was using a Curado 200DHVS on a Crucial CRC-X68M also spooled with 20 Lb Power Pro. The Curado is a high speed retrieve with a 7 to 1 gear ratio and you can really cover some water with it. For you Smallie guys that like to burn a spinnerbait this is the reel to use for some absolutely bone jarring strikes. You simply cannot reel fast enough to deter a hungry smallmouth and they sure don’t have time to think about as the bait goes by. Because we were fishing for Pickerel, I did not use a trailer hook on the spinnerbait. They tend to get the whole bait in their mouth when they hit and the trailer tends to hook them deep which makes it much more difficult to release the fish unharmed.
For Toad fishing we tied the Power Pro direct to the hook with no leader. This is a fairly fast presentation and line visibility is not an issue. The combination of braided line and a medium heavy rod gives you the ability to get an immediate hookset at the full length of your cast because there is no line stretch. You set and you are into the fish.
For the Senko and Flutter Worm soft sticks I tried both with and without a Fluorocarbon leader and it didn’t seem to make that much difference in this application. Normally, if I were fishing for bass with a slower presentation such as this I would use the leader although I know some very good anglers who swear it doesn’t matter. Go with what gives you confidence.
The big fish we were hoping to catch never materialized but the action was still fast and furious all day. All in all not a bad way to spend a day. See you next time on Rogers TV New Brunswick, Cable 10.
Rick
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