Log-Rolling For Smallmouth Bass

The yearly two-month bass-fishing closure on Vancouver Island came to an end on June 15th, so I set out on the first weekend of the new bass season for a hike to my favorite smallmouth lake.  The bass stay pretty inactive through fall and winter, when temperatures are low, and then they spawn in the spring, which is the reason for the closure from April 15 - June 15 each year.  As water temperatures rise, smallmouth bass get more and more worked up.  So if there's been a warm spring, like there has been this year, then by the time the closure comes to an end, the bass are ready to strike anything that moves.  I figured that would be the perfect time to take my wife, five-year-old son, and not-quite-two-year-old daughter for a nice, leisurely, 15km round-trip Father's Day hike through the forest to fish for bass.  There are certainly much more accessible bass lakes in the south island area, like Langford, or Thetis or Elk/Beaver Lakes; but my rating system for quality fishing spots also takes into account the level of human activity in the area.  If a lake only has halfway-decent fishing, but the chances of seeing another person there are near zero, that nets it a way higher score in my imaginary fishing-spot hierarchy.  The lake we hiked to over the weekend is isolated enough that it attracts only the odd dirtbiker or 4x4 enthusiast.  Off the top of my head, I think we encountered 7 people during the whole 5-hour trip.  Considering that it was a pretty perfect summer weekend, that's a low enough number that the fishing at this lake would only need to be mediocre for me to hold it in fairly high esteem.  The bass fishing at this particular lake, however, is far better than that; it's actually really solid.

The lake was formed several decades ago, when a river was dammed as part of an old logging operation.  The dam is still there, and the level of the lake is occasionally altered through its use.  The lake has a deep channel through it, where the river used to flow, and then everywhere else it's fairly shallow.  The whole thing is strewn with logs and little grass islands, and old dead trees growing right up out of the middle of the lake.  For smallmouth bass, who are ambush predators that love lots of cover to lurk in, it's an absolute paradise.  Bass aren't native to British Columbia; they were introduced here over a hundred years ago, and gradually spread both naturally and through introductions by fishermen.  Be that as it may, they are perfectly suited to shallow, man-made lakes like this, and they have flourished there.

Sandra, the kids, and I made the long trek out to the lake, eating the salmonberries that grow all along the trails in the area the whole way.  It's probably a rougher and longer hike than most young kids would like to undertake, but most kids don't have as cruel a daddy as mine do.  For top-notch fish and game opportunities, nature demands sacrifices.  If you can learn that lesson before you're even in kindergarten, so much the better.  In one trip like this, kids can see all manner of great stuff; like bald eagles, snakes, woodpeckers, red squirrels, and weasel poo.  Well worth a few stumbles, scrapes, and sore tiny legs.  Once we arrived at the lake, we walked up its western shore for another half kilometre or so, to reach the first good fishing area.  There are spots at the lake that provide easy casting straight from shore, but those spots aren't great for actually catching fish.  The best spots are where slash piles left near shore from old logging operations have toppled partway into the water, creating little mazes of half-sunken logs that one can carefully walk out onto, and cast a line amongst.  On a sunny day in the summer, when the water has reached a sufficient temperature, the bass are voracious feeders.  Looking down into the shallow water from a log perch, you can't see anything moving in the water.  As soon as a lure is cast in alongside the submerged timber, however, it's not long before the copper-green torpedoes emerge to mercilessly blindside it.  They will hammer pretty much anything with movement sufficient to catch their attention.  I typically use either a blue no. 2 Blue Fox Super Vibrax, or the gold no. 6 Panther Martin with a little orange hackle at the back.  Realistically, although I find that these lures produce the best, any shiny spinner will do. Watching from above, I often wonder exactly how it is that anything is left alive in that lake at all. For super aggressive smallmouths like these, I also pack 20lb. test monofilament.  It's the cheapest way to avoid having your lure chomped right off of your line, or having it snapped the first time a big bass wraps it around a sunken log or three.  The first time I tried fishing this lake, I had to lose three spinners before I conceded that 4lb. test panfry-rainbow-trout fishing line would not cut it here.

I ended up catching the biggest fish of the day on my second or third cast, and subsequently caught two more good eating-size smallmouths over the next hour or so.  This was interspersed with catching a few hilariously small bass, who apparently have no qualms about striking lures almost the same size as themselves.  We fished that first floating slashpile for half the time, then moved to a second, similar spot a few hundred metres further along the western shoreline.  The fishing was intermittently halted by various members of our party falling through the logs either into deep brush, or into the lake itself, which is pretty much tradition at this particular spot.  Most trips out, I give up trying to avoid the water altogether, and just start wading in amongst the logs instead of trying to keep my balance on top of them.  After the kids had had about as much of this fun as they could handle, we headed back on the long walk home; ending up with 3/4 of the 4-fish daily limit on bass.  We're lucky enough to live in a spot where we can make the walk out to this lake right from the house; no need for any driving at all.  Of course, some young travelers don't view forsaking vehicular transport as a virtue.  By the time we walked back up the front steps of our place, both of the kids were completely beat, and required significant infusions of milk, peanut butter, bananas, and bleached-white-flour bread to be brought back to life.  Apparently salmonberries don't supply all the nutrition one needs for an arduous journey such as this.

Soon after arriving back home, I sharpened my knife and got the fish cleaning station ready.  I filleted and deboned the three bass, taking extra care, because they have a row of ridiculously sharp spines on their dorsal fins.  I then put the fillets in a ziplock bag with a marinade consisting of mostly canola oil (any oil will do), a couple really good splashes of lemon juice, a dash of garlic powder, and a couple pinches each of salt and black pepper.  I squeezed all the air out of the bag before sealing it, and massaged the fillets in the marinade a bit before putting the bag in the fridge to sit overnight.  The next day, I rinsed the fillets off, and tossed them in cajun spice Fish Crisp (get it from Canadian Tire, it's the best thing ever), before pan frying them at a medium-high temperature for a couple minutes per side.  The result is delicious, crispy, mildly spicy fish that Captain Highliner himself would be proud of.  If you've had bass before and didn't like it, or you think bass isn't a good eating fish, cook it this way, and I guarantee you'll have a good experience.  Bass can be variable in their flavor, and can definitely be muddy tasting at times, which is why people don't often just cook up straight smallmouth bass steaks on the barbecue.  The meat is white and flaky, though, which is the perfect texture for a fish fry;  marinating them and breading them then creates a zero-tolerance environment for so-so tasting fish.  I love it, Sandra likes it, our daughter likes it, and our son won't go near it.  That's a pretty good track record.

Fishing serves really well to bridge the gap in the hunting seasons that exists between spring black bear season, which just wrapped up on June 15th, and the beginning of archery season for deer, which starts August 25th.  For people who want to keep that supply of wild caught, organic, humanely harvested, hormone- and antibiotic-free meat coming in during the summer months, bass fishing offers a fun, cheap, alternative fishery. As long as the water temperatures stay warm this summer, I'll be going back out to the bass lake (probably by myself from here on out) every weekend I can; to walk the logs, fall off the logs, battle the bass, eat salmonberries, and bring home the healthiest wild fish sticks that nature has to offer.