Bass…. what??
I know… this is a trout only website. But, much can be learned from other species and applied to trout fishing. I cut my teeth on California largemouth bass and so cal saltwater fish such as mako sharks and and home guard yellowtail. These experiences laid a solid foundation for my trophy trout endeavors.
Largemouth bass are a great fish to learn from. They are big time piscivors, just like most big trout. They are structure oriented. They have day time and night time feeding patterns that are similar to many apex predatory fish. They are plentiful and can be caught most any place in the USA. But, the most important piece for me is how the biggest and baddest bass around will key in on large forage items like rainbow trout when they are available. Big browns, lakers, splake, tigers, bulls and even rainbows will chase small trout as well.
I remember the first time I saw a largemouth chasing a trout. It was around 1992. I was fishing Castaic Lake in California and saw a huge boil and thought it must have been a diving bird. Then I saw a trout jump out of the water and put two and two together. A few days after that experience I was visiting the Fred Hall show and I saw a guy named Allan Cole selling a giant wooden lure called the AC Plug. As soon as I saw the lure swim in the casting pool I knew this was the key to unlocking the trophy largemouth puzzle. When we saw they were selling for $50 apiece we decided to just make our own.
We bought some dowels and sanded them down to the correct shape. We painted them up and sealed them with some clear coat. After some screw eyes and mustad hooks we were ready for business. We tested them in my pool and they looked awesome! They were hardly dry as we headed up the five freeway with heavy anticipation. We couldn’t even wait to get out on the main lake and started casting from shore at the lagoon. It only took about 45 minutes and we had a 4 pounder hooked up! We ended up hooking and landing a bunch of fish that first day up to 8 pounds. These fish were used to feeding on stocked trout and had never seen a “swimbait” before so it was easy pickings in those early days.
So what did I learn from those early years chasing trophy largemouth bass? I learned how to cast and troll swimbaits. I learned about leadcore. I learned how to rig the terminal gear. I learned about structure and how to read a graph. The casting and trolling techniques that I used back in those days are almost identical to what I like to do for trophy trout to this day.
Fast forward 20 years and I am fishing one of my favorite brown trout lakes and I see a boil and a kokanee jump out of the water. I grabbed my casting rod that was rigged with a large kokanee imitation and cast it just past the boil. It looked to me like the brown had missed the kokanee which meant to me that he was still “lit up” and I might have a shot at a hookup. I had cast to many trout like this and rarely hooked up. But this time I got lucky and as soon as my lure hit the water… he grabbed it!
As I released that big brown I couldn’t help but think of all of those years of bass fishing. If you are a trout nut like I am then try to think of how you can apply the things that you have learned while targeting other species. You might come up with a cross over technique that will put that fish of a lifetime in the boat!
Mark Knoch
