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| Catch Bass Anytime |
By Ken Botty
THE PORK chunk-and-spinner sailed through the early morning mist and landed in the branches of a fallen tree about six feet from shore. "Hung," I thought, but kept my mouth shut and watched Bill Plummer work.
Raising his seven-foot two-inch bait-casting rod, he tightened line, extended his arm forward, and let the chunk slide gently into the water. Then he moved the rod up and down. The chunk dipped in and out of the water, and the spinner made audible plops and sent widening rings out over the lightly rippled surface.
I saw the tell tale wake of a bass heading for the lure just as I was about to ask Bill how he'd get a fish out of the maze of branches if one did strike.
It was easy. The bass bolted the chunk, Bill reared back to slam home the hook, and the branches vanished in spray and foam."If he's big enough, he'll get out by himself," Bill said.
The fish went through a series of violent gymnastics for about 30 seconds. Bill hung on, and then the bass, a deep-bodied four pounder, leaped clear of his submerged home.
After tagging and releasing the bronzeback, Bill permitted himself a small smile and said, "See what I mean about hazards? I'll bet every guy who has fished this shoreline tossed his lure near that tree, but I'll guarantee that I'm the only one who got hung up on purpose."
It sounded crazy, but I was beginning to see the light and some fine bass.
For a couple of days I watched Plummer flip what he calls his "fearsome foursome"—chunk-and-spinner ,black eel, jig-and-pork strip, and toy frog into fallen trees, drooping willows, sunken brush, water lilies, eel grass, duckweed, and other assorted cover that most anglers can't fish even if they want to. What I saw come out of these places transformed me into an avid disciple of hazard fishing.
The average bassman fishes a variety of lures at different depths, and attempts to put his baits near spots which afford cover for fish. Plummer goes a step farther he fishes in the cover. The results are amazing.
I first heard of Plummer several years ago while gathering information for a story at the field headquarters of Massachusetts' Division of Fisheries & Game at Westboro, Mass. The talk drifted to bass. "There's a guy here in Westboro,a pilot, who can catch bass anytime,"said Bill Tompkins, the division's chief aquatic biologist. "Our creel census men and wardens say he always takes fish. He's so consistent we have him tagging for us, since he always puts back anything under four pounds."
After tagging a fish, Plummer jots down the date, the tag number, and the length of the fish in a notebook he carries in his tackle box. The figures help the division determine the growth rate, and approximate rate of recapture, when other anglers re-
turn the tags to the Westboro field headquarters.
Mildly interested, I recorded the name of the bass fisherman, then promptly forgot to follow up.
Then one day last spring the wire photo machine at The Worcester Evening Gazette in Worcester, Mass., where I work, sent in a picture of a pilot with four incredibly large bass spread out on the tail of his plane. Bill Plummer had returned to haunt me.
In Yankeeland, any bass between three and five pounds is a good fish. Once in a lifetime a fisherman may lake one over that weight. The four specimens staring at me in the wire photo were all better than six pounds, and, as the captain so casually stated, all were taken by Plummer in half a day of fishing. There just had to be a story at the bottom of such success.
I found Bill Plummer at the Westboro Airport. A Navy flight instructor during World War II, he has been teaching civilians to fly since his discharge from the service in 1944. When he's not flying, he's fishing.
A native of Stoneham, Mass., Plummer has pursued bass in the Bay State, in Maine, New Hampshire, York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. His method has worked wherever he has tried it, on both largemouth's and smallmouths. Fishing the deep hazards in the cold, clear lakes of New Hampshire and Maine has been especially good.
His wife, Norma, estimates that Bill puts in about 1,000 hours each year fishing bass. His six-year-old daughter,
Beth Ann, is an apt student of her daddy's form, and already has netted more bronzebacks than a good many senior bassmen.
Bill stays alert on cross-country flights to spot likely looking ponds, but his success ratio close to home has been
such that he doesn't have to wander far. Many mornings he takes his limit before reporting to work.
When I told him that outdoor life readers might be interested in how he does it, he readily agreed to describe
his method. "We'll have to go fishing, I guess," he said.
Our first fishing date was at the huge Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts where Bill had taken the four six-pounders. Here he began teaching me a return to fundamentals that cover, when applied to bass, should be taken literally.
We pulled up in a bay dotted with the tops of trees left standing when the reservoir was flooded. "I think we'll
find a few here," he said. "Have you a 2/0 or 3/0 weedless hook in your box?" I didn't, so Bill produced one, told me to slip on the eel or pork chunk, and cast "right into the middle of that mess."Bill, now 37, has been bass fishing since he was 10. About 12 years ago he started making his own weedless hooks, which he has since patented. He wraps a single piece of wire on the shank with silk, pushes it under and through the eye and back to the hook point.
Here he bends the wire into a triangle with the base facing the hook point.
He then fits another piece of wire into the triangle so that its two ends ride on either side of the point as obstruction
guides. Theory is that the triangle keeps the guide wires from being bent away from their guide position.
His hook works well, as do the other weedless hooks of premium quality which can be bought in most sporting goods stores.
If you take up hazard fishing, buy the strongest weedless hook you can get, and then make it a habit to hone the point every hour or so while fishing.
Snags tend to dull even the most efficient weedless hooks, and a couple of licks with the hone now and then may mean the difference between a missed strike and a hooked fish.
Acting on Bill's instructions to cast into the mess, I tried to put my eel into the middle of the sunken trees. But my thumb, acting independently of my brain, checked the cast at the edge of the waterlogged forest. Years of habit aren't easily broken.
Bill whipped his black pork-strip eel into the treetops and let it sink."When you fish the eel in deep water," he said, "crawl it back along the bottom. Let it come to a complete stop every now and then. You'll feel the obstructions, but if you raise your rod tip slowly, nine times out of 10 the lure will wiggle through." I watched as he brought his eel back toward the boat, doubtful that he could clear the snags.
The only snag he encountered was a three-pound bass. It hit the eel on the bottom, right in the middle of the underwater woodland, and came up fighting mad. Bill played him out, grabbed him by the lower jaw, extricated the hook. tagged him, and let him swim away.
I had just started to get the feel of dragging the eel through and over the underwater trees when I felt a light tap, then a determined grab of my bait. The fish. a small one. hung me up. "Give him slack," Bill ordered. I did. the fish swam clear, and I brought him
in without further difficulty.
Fishing the eel calls for different methods at different depths. In shallow water. Plummer gives it an erratic, medium-speed retrieve which keeps it off the bottom. Bass, he says. rush the eel in shallow water (four feet and less), enabling the angler to set the hook immediately.
When the eel is on the bottom, the fish will tap it several times before making a determined grab. Don't strike at the taps—wait until you feel a firm pressure.
Bill uses a weedless hook with the eel when the going is tough, but often attaches it to a nonweedless jig in relatively clear water. His free-spool baitcasting reels are packed with 15 pound-test line. and his 15-pound-test monofilament leaders are 15 feet long.
The monofilament, he feels, resists fraying and tends to slide over obstructions with greater ease, especially when dry lining the pork chunk and spinner in pads, weed beds, and shoreline brush.
After our expedition to Quabbin, Bill and I went fishing in a small pond less than 20 miles from Boston Common a pond. incidentally from which Bill took, tagged, and released more than 200 bass in one year. It is cluttered with pads so thick you can barely see the water.
Bill quietly rowed to where the vegetation was the thickest, produced a pork chunk-spinner combination and a sponge-rubber frog, and said, "Take your pick." I chose the frog, originally a child's toy which jumped when a small rubber bulb was squeezed, forcing air into the thin rubber legs. Bill had chopped off the air hose and had mounted the frog on a weed less hook. I plopped it into
the pads.
It sat with just its eyes above water. When I twitched the rod tip, the frog's thin legs kicked backward in an exact
imitation of the real thing.
I never got a chance to give it a second twitch, because something green, black, and white blew the pads apart to get at it. The bass got the frog, but I sat there like a dolt and forgot to set the hook. About 10 minutes later, a five-pounder heaved through the pads to smash Bill's chunk and spinner. Bill had moved the lure rapidly, causing the No. 3 spinner to swat the pads rhythmically while the pork chunk crawled,slid, and gurgled behind.
On days when the bass seem shy, he finds it best to remove the spinner and fish the chunk solo. The toy frog is also deadly when the fish are especially wary.
Plummer's whole approach to fishing is similar to a hunter stalking game.
The oarlocks of his canvas auto-top boat are rubber lined to eliminate noise, and he keeps a rubberized sheet on the bottom of the boat for the same reason.
All his equipment is placed within easy reach to prevent needless bumping and banging in productive cover.
With the quiet approach, Bill is able to make fish-taking casts of 20 to 50 feet in the brush, bonnets, and reeds.
Short casts make for better lure control in the hazards.
Bill uses a seven-foot two-inch rod to fish the surface hazards. The rod length helps to keep the line off the water, and prevents its snagging or wrapping on pads or other obstructions.
The rod has plenty of backbone, but tapers rapidly to a tip. A strong butt section is essential because hooks must be set hard in the hazards. The tip is fast, or limber, since the "fearsome foursome" lures average about a quarter of an ounce apiece.
For deep fishing, Plummer uses a six-foot four-inch rod. He claims it gives him better "feel," or lure control,
in the depths.
After Bill took the five-pounder, I latched on to a couple of bruisers in the four-pound-plus bracket. Both bass smashed the toy frog as it sat motionless in the pads. I learned, however, that it's a good idea to try a variety of speeds when retrieving the frog. On some days we fished, the bass took only when the frog was fairly flying over the pads.
I've fished this particular pond many times since, with Bill and alone, and have yet to see any other fishermen
probing the heavy cover. The game warden who checks the area says few bass are taken there by other fishermen. The pond has the reputation of being- a panfish hotspot.
Bill caught several hundred bass there last season, and at least 20 of the bigmouths went five pounds or better. He returned all but a few of the fish.
I would rather take bass in open water, but often I don't have a choice.
There are plenty of days when the fish just won't venture into the open, even if the lure passes close by their lairs. Fishing the edges on such days can be a discouraging business.
Strangely enough, sunny days seem to be the best producers in water covered with heavy bloom or algae. Given enough protective cover, bass can be found in the shallows even in midsummer.
Before I started fishing the weeds, I thought that bass hooked in them would hang up immediately. It doesn't work that way. True, small fish often bog down, but bigmouths of three pounds or more, given the opportunity,have the power to clear a channel in their frantic struggles to shake loose from the hook.
Dangling the chunk-and-spinner in the branches of fallen trees and shoreline brush is another Plummer specialty. Though most largemouth's take the lure quietly as it enters the water, it's by no means unusual for one to leap clear of the water to gobble the chunk
as it sways from a branch.
Bill doesn't cast over an isolated branch or log he chucks the chunk-and-spinner directly into the thickest part of the hazard. He makes a short cast and thumbs the reel gently as the lure enters the tree or bushes, allowing it to descend slowly to the water. Then
he uses the dangling procedure described at the start of the story.
Dangling is especially effective on the hottest summer days when bass are enjoying the shade and protection of overhanging willows, brush, and bushes. Bill has taken hundreds with this little trick in water less than two feet deep.
The combination of a short cast, long rod, and long leader make it fairly easy to maneuver a hooked fish clear provided the angler doesn't go to pieces when he hears and sees a real heavyweight thrashing on the end of a line
that's suspended from several tangled branches.
It's worth the trouble, for heavy bass are almost always found where the going is toughest. They have been relatively undisturbed, even in these days of heavy fishing pressure and multiple water usage.
Hazard fishing, on the top and down deep, is definitely a job for bait-casting tackle. Bill uses six and nine pound-test line in open water, but experience with thousands of bass have taught him that 15-pound-test makes the most practical hazard line.
This rules out spinning for me. To my mind, if you go heavier than six or eight-pound-test line in fresh water
with a spinning outfit, you're defeating the purpose for which the method was developed.
Our last time out, Bill and I tallied seven bass in five hours of steady casting. Two of them were five-pounders. One hit the toy frog in the pads, one was snaked out of a deep-water brush pile by the eel, three fell to the chunk and-spinner in the hyacinths, and two were taken on surface poppers in open water. So five out of the seven, including the two heavyweights, were hazard fish.
Bill drew a tremendous boil with the eel in a reedy area near the boat landing as we were coming in. We tried everything to get him to come again, but he wasn't interested. As we lashed the boat to the station wagon, Bill remarked, "We could have done a lot better."
The next evening, as I was sitting down to dinner, Bill called from the
driveway. On the tailgate of his wagon was a seven-pound largemouth. "He wanted it today," Bill said, "and I was happy to oblige." THE END
OUTDOOR LIFE JUNE 1959