Special Places part 1

I was very lucky as a young man, my Dad loved to fish and hunt, and our family was always going fishing. My dad was in the army and we lived in many different places, we lived in Lawton Oklahoma, when I was 10 to 12 yrs old.

There were many places to fish on the Army Reservation, it had many small ponds or tanks as they were called there, and they were full of fish. Near our home there were many small creeks and a couple of small ponds. This was the first time in my life that my parents let me go fishing by myself ( though I had to go with someone for safety's sake as there were lots of snakes ).

My next door neighbor was a boy my age named Jimmy Tucker, and we spent many a day fishing a little creek about a block from my house for catfish and bluegill. One day while riding our bicycles we discovered a small farm pond, and by agreeing to cut the owners lawn twice a month, we got permission to fish in the pond. This pond was about five acres and totally full of fish, as the owners didn't fish much, and it very seldom got fished. We were in heaven! At first we just fished for the bluegills, shellcrackers, and asst. sunfish that were so abundant.

One day while reading a copy of my fathers Field and Stream magazine, I read an article on bass fishing, and it was talking about the hot new lures called plastic eels. The next day we went to a nearby tackle store and bought several packages. They came pre-rigged on a harness with three hooks, a couple of beads and a little spinner in front. It looked goofy, but BOYDID IT CATCH BASS! A whole new fishing experience opened up to us, a virgin lake chock full of bass, that had never seen a plastic eel before. We litterly caught fish till we got tired, NOT!!

Most of the bass we caught were 1/2 to 2 pounds, and most days we caught 50 to 75 fish, the onlyproblem we had was the three exposed hooks hung up so often we lost lots of them. We solved the problem by taking the eels off the harness and put a weedless hook in them, and putting a split shot in front we could cast right into the brush piles without getting hung up. Now that we could fish the brushy areas we started catching much larger fish, up to five lbs.

When I was twelve my father got transferred to Ft Benning Georgia, I was really unhappy that we had to move, and leave my little spot of heavenly fishing. Little did I know about the fishing bonanza I was about to become part of. If Oklahoma was heaven, Georgia was the seventh Heaven!
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Big Baits pt 4

Big baits, Big fish!! This is especially true in the ocean. One of my favorite fish in So. California is the Calico bass, looks just like a freshwater bass, and eats all the same lures. I have caught them on crankbaits, plastic lures, worms, lizards, creature baits, and most all other soft plastic bass baits jigs, topwater lures, and the list goes on and on.

I grew up fishing for largemouth in Oklahoma, and Georgia, and then when I moved to Calif in the early 60's, I continued my love affair with them. I fished the pro bass circuit for 5 years in the early 80's, and ran a profitable bass guiding business for about 15 years. In the early 80's I got my USCG Captains License, and started doing more and more saltwater charters, that's when I discovered calicos would eat all the standard bass baits I had in my freshwater tackle boxes. Boy, I was in heaven! Unlike freshwater, you could easily catch 50 to 100 calicos in a day's fishing, most of which were released.

Even before catch and release was popular in the ocean, I insisted my clients release all bass over 5 lbs and most of my regulars had a 3 lb ceiling. There were lots of large calicos then, but it seemed such a shame to kill a large slow growing trophy, just to eat it. These were special fish that could be caught several times and give a special thrill to many people before someone harvested them. This was especially true in Santa Monica Bay, where the fishing pressure was intense. There were up to twenty party boats at times, ( 55 to 75 ft boats that carried 30 to 50 passengers ) and many small 16 to 30 ft private boats that plied the bays waters. In those days you could easily catch many calicos over 5 lbs in a days fishing. At some of the offshore islands with their vast kelp forests, the numbers of large bass was amazing, but I noticed the numbers of big bass was steadily going down in the bay.

More on BIG BASS tomorrow!!

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