Always More Firsts

“Never stop learning.” That’s the motto of The Bass University, founded by returning Elite Mike Iaconelli and my friend Pete Glooz-neck (Overstreet pronunciation), an effort in which I’ve played a small role on occasion.

I always thought the motto was an exhortation, a command that we should never rest on our laurels. In recent weeks, though, I’ve come to believe that it’s what makes the sport of fishing great. Simply put, you can never know it all, try it all or experience it all. Like a shark, you’ve got to keep on moving (learning) or you die.

Heading into our annual January trip to Lake El Salto, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve been there nearly 20 times, so the build-up to the journey no longer feels as fresh and exhilarating. That’s a first-world problem, I suppose, one that many other people would like to have. It’s true, though – in the days leading up to somewhere new like Panama or Guatemala or Alaska, I get serious excitement butterflies. I have some ideas of what’s going to happen, but I don’t fully know what to expect. When we go to Mexico, though, I can go through the routine in my sleep. That’s both a positive (it should free up some of my mental capacity for enjoyment) and a negative, as I’m probably incapable of being truly wowed there ever again.

“Incapable of being truly wowed” probably applies to bass fishing in general for me, because even though I have no belief that I’ll ever be KVD, I’ve fished with KVD and most of his peers. I have them on speed dial. I’ve been to many of the greatest bass fisheries in the world, and it’s likely I could go to most of the others if I wanted to do so.

On the flip side, El Salto does remain exciting to me because it’s so incredibly prolific, fertile and diverse. It’s where I’ve accomplished many of the “firsts” in my angling career – first 10XD fish, first Whopper Plopper fish, and so on. Unfortunately, the more advanced and experienced I get, the fewer of those firsts there are to conquer. In that respect I’m envious of my wife Hanna, because although she’s developed into a hell of an angler over the past 17 years (with more globetrotting experience and bigger personal bests than many of you) she’s still feeling her way through the fishiverse. She still has lots of firsts to knock off the list.

When we head to El Salto, I know that there are a handful of proven winner lures that are likely to catch the majority of our fish, but I still always bring a few new things to try. I subscribe to the 80/20 rule on vacation – spend no more than 20 percent of your time on the water experimenting with lures, colors and rigging. On this trip, the member of the “proven” group that outperformed the rest by a wide margin was a simple 5-inch Senko, generally in some form of green. Worldwide, that’s been my personal number one producer for at least the past decade, too. It’s a bite I love. It’s a bite I have confidence in. But it’s also a bite that I’ve (fortunately) seen a thousand times before.

I could have left dejected because I didn’t get to work a new lure or technique into the arsenal. I could have left dejected because the fishing was much tougher than usual (although at least five of the anglers in our group caught their persona bests). I could have left dejected because I couldn’t enjoy a meal or a cold Pacifico without some random stranger (or non-random, non-stranger) asking me if I had any more Senkos to spare. In the end, though, I left happy, having learned two new things.

First, I caught a fish on a shakey head. Hard as it may be to believe, in my 40 years of fishing, and 26 years of bass boat ownership, I’d never done that. I’d caught fish on similar baits, like Slider heads, but never a true Alabama-style shakey head. I’d tied one on a few times, and it would get hung up, I’d say “screw it,” and go back to something else. This trip, I figured it out. Actually, Hanna figured it out and let me in on the fun. I also caught fish on a Carolina Rigged Senko. As noted above, I’ve caught a lot of my bass (perhaps a majority of them) in recent years on a Senko, but it has always been Texas Rigged or Wacky Rigged. I’d tried it on the ball-and-chain a handful of times, became frustrated when it didn’t produce, and then replaced it with a old-faithful lizard, French fry or big worm. This time, it paid off.

I know that those are two of the most rudimentary techniques in bass fishing – baits you’d give to a rank beginner, but I’d never made them work for me, and it was getting to the point of embarrassment. I mean, as a 6 year-old, if you don’t know how to tie your shoe you can ask someone for help, but if you fake it for a few decades beyond that it becomes embarrassing to ask and you just keep hiding your deficiency. Now I may not become a master shakey header, and I may not use the Senko as my primary C-Rig offering, but at least I know that they’re viable options. I don’t need to avoid them at all costs.

While I was in the spirit of learning, I also asked my guide to take me to a spot I’d heard about, seen, and driven over, but never fished. Right in front of the Anglers Inn lodge, there is an old bridge. During the high water period of the year (fall/winter) it is under the water. In the low water period (late spring and summer) you drive over it to get to the boats. After my first visit in December of 2009, my friends Kelly Jones and Cody Bird asked me if I’d fished the bridge – apparently it was their favorite deep water spot for big fish. At that point, I didn’t even know it existed, but every May or June thereafter I forgot about it. One day during this trip we were fishing nearby, about to finish up the day, when I asked my guide what he thought of fishing the bridge.

“Used to be good,” he said, his Spanglish far better than mine. “Not so good now.”

Nevertheless, I insisted we go over there. I had nothing to lose. We fished it for about 5 minutes with nothing to show for it, but on the “last cast,” I brought my shakey head up over the side of the bridge, felt it tick the guardrail, and as it fell, it was engulfed by a chunky 2-pound bass who thought he was far bigger. It was a win on multiple counts, and made the trip for me.