Sight fishing for spawning bass is very different from most fishing an angler would undertake. You are casting a bait to a bass you can see, sitting on its bed, watching the bass’ reaction to your bait, and in the best of circumstances, seeing the bass inhale the bait. I end up covering a lot of water when I bed fish at Lake Fork, much of it either navigating the stumps with the trolling motor on high, or idling with the big motor, as I move from one spawning cove to the next, then watching without even having a rod in my hand as I troll along once I’ve reached a likely area.

When I see a bass, or something I’m convinced is a bed, I’ll stop and survey the area carefully, waiting to see if a bass comes back to the bed, or if I can see another bass in the area. Bass do tend to pick the same areas as other bass to spawn in. And so there is often more than one bedding bass visible at a time. Many of these bass are so spooky with a moving boat around that you will only see them returning to their beds if you stop and remain fairly still for a few moments. These aren’t days when I catch a large number of fish. I really don’t try for bedding bass that are under three pounds, but then can spend a half hour trying to catch a bass on a bed. Many bedding bass prove to be uncatchable, most probably because they have already been recently caught and released. Those fish will usually not return to their bed when a boat is anywhere nearby, or else leave the bed at full speed any time a lure is cast to it.

So the bottom line is I spend a lot of time doing other things besides seriously trying to entice a catchable fish, so usually only hook somewhere between 3 and 12 fish on one of these Fork bed fishing days. I use good seven foot medium power fast action fishing rods, and have recently upgraded to some size 30 spinning reels to pair with them (most of my reels are smaller size 10 reels) for the Z-Man TRD plastics I use on a tiny child rig. These are finesse baits, finesse fishing being pretty much the only bass fishing I do in my arthritic old age. I keep three of these rods rigged, and no other rods on the deck of my boat, for these trips. One of the most amazing things about these finesse rigs is how few nice fish you lose. Out of the 15 bass I’ve hooked on my last two fishing trips on this timber and clumpy weeds filled lake, I’ve lost zero. I’ve never seen another finesse rig that lands such a high percentage of nicer bass.

Yesterday was the perfect weather day for sight fishing, sunny with light winds all day. There are too few days like that in the spring in Texas. Lake Fork draws huge crowds of anglers this time of year, and yesterday was no exception. I’m always surprised at how few of these fishermen are actually sight fishing for bass, and out of the ones who are, just how few are very good at it. I routinely fish right behind other boats, some of them with step ladders or other raised platforms on the deck (a practice that seems far too dangerous on a stumpy lake like Fork, to me), and catch so many fish they have missed. How does an almost 74 year old man wearing prescription sunglasses accomplish this? I don’t know, but I won’t argue with it. I take photos of all the fish I catch on these trips. It helps me keep a count of what I catch, plus I enjoy sharing pics with Bobbi while I’m out.

And so that is the backdrop for my trip to Lake Fork yesterday, that turned into the bass fishing day of a lifetime for an amateur like myself. I ended up catching 10 fish, two of them 4 pounders, three of them 6 pounders, and one 7 pounder. My best five fish would have weighed over 30 pounds. I never managed to accomplish that feat in all my tournament fishing years, or even before or since, for that matter. I didn’t even catch my first fish until 11:21, so most of the excitement was in the afternoon hours. Some highlights of the day:

11:59: I was trolling out of the cove where I’d caught my first fish, near the main point. Most days, this stretch of bank would have had too much wind on it for me to even check it, but on this almost completely calm day, I was looking. This fish was like the holy grail of bed fishing. I spotted her from quite a ways away. She never saw me at all, even while I was making my long casts towards her. She took the bait on my second cast. I got a very solid hookset, and she ran right out of the weeds that surrounded her, into the open water. This scenario is what every bedding bass angler is looking for, but doesn’t often happen. My second bass of the day, she weighed 6.30 pounds.

1:40: I had made it into my favorite spawning cove on Fork. I’d caught a couple of fish in it already. One of them weighed 4.24. This fish was far back in a tiny opening in the weeds. I only threw my bigger TRD at this fish. That rig has 20 pound test braided line on it (as opposed to the 15 pound test on my other two rods), and I knew I needed all the help I could get to get her out of all these weeds, if I hooked her. There were other bedding fish nearby, and with my pole anchor down, I was going back and forth fishing for her and the other fish. It took me about 15 minutes to catch her. My fifth bass of the day, this beauty weighed 7.04, my best bass of the year so far.

2:24: This fish was one of the other fish I was fishing for when I caught my last fish. She was on a deeper bed with a male mate. Neither of these fish stayed on the bed well or showed much interest in my bait when I first fished for them, so I had moved to the back of the cove and fished for several likely looking bed fish there, but failed to catch any of them. On my way back out of the cove, I stopped to try these two fish again, and she immediately acted much more aggressive this time, and took the bait on my fourth cast. My sixth bass of the day, this one weighed 6.42.

4:31: After catching another 4 pounder, I’d left my favorite cove and moved to another smaller cove I really like. There were a number of fish to be seen, but most were either just cruising the shallows, or sitting suspended, with no visible bed nearby. This beautiful fish appeared to be on a bed, but when I cast a bait to her, she just moved to another spot that looked like a bed. When I cast there, she took off to another spot. This is a common occurrence, musical beds, I call it. When fish do this, they usually aren’t catchable, so I moved on fairly quickly. I managed to find a nice chunky 3 1/2 pounder a little further into the cove. That fish stayed on the bed, acted aggressive toward my bait, and was soon getting it’s photo taken and being released. I didn’t find anything else that seemed catchable in the back of the cove, and as I moved back out of the cove, this fish was again on the bed where I’d first seen her. As soon as I cast to her, she again moved to what looked like another bed. When I cast there, she immediately inhaled my bait and took off with it. As I set the hook, I don’t know who was more shocked, me or the fish. She ran behind clump after clump of weeds, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to land her. But I followed with the boat, then managed to coax her around the worst clump of weeks, and netted her. My ninth bass of the day, this one weighed 6.55.

One 3 3/4 pounder in the next cove, and my day was done. An unforgettable day it was for me.