Reclusive bass emerge for spawning season

By Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published June 20, 2008

I came eyeball-to-eyeball with a largemouth bass this week, and I wasn’t even carrying a fishing rod.

Late spring and early summer is bass-spawning time, and the usually reclusive fish do it all right out in the shallows.

I found the bass — actually a pod of four nice bass — while loping along the banks of a small lake looking for panfish. Panfishing leads to nice bass often enough that I carry tackle for both fish whenever I visit a warm-water lake or pond.

I was wearing my polarized sunglasses, and I spotted the four fish lurking over the clean gravel nests they’d fanned clean of twigs, weeds and a crushed beer can.

Bass nests often are in one or two feet of water, and they look like bright craters against the green bottom.

Anglers tromp along this bankside path all of the time — the trail, which winds through a lakeside forest, is beaten down to rocks and gravel. But I suspect most of them don’t wear polarized sunglasses, which eliminates the surface reflection and allows you to see into the water.

Polarized glasses also make the world look a little sharper when you’re just walking or driving around, but that’s not always a good thing.

My polarized sunglasses are my most important piece of fishing equipment. I’d rather fish with a junk rod and reel than fish with state-of-the-art tackle and no sunglasses. Spotting fish — and other things underwater — is a tremendous advantage, and it’s also a lot of fun.

If you wear polarized glasses, you often get to see fish following — or even taking — your fly or lure. And, like the other day, you see fish that other anglers never see.

Anyway, all four bass were pretty big by Western Washington standards. One fat, egg-stuffed female was probably about six pounds. One male bass — whom I got to know very well while trying to take his photograph — was maybe three pounds and sported a distinctive white spot on his jutting lower jaw.

Largemouth bass are the thugs of warmwater lakes and ponds. They have huge mouths, and they’ll eat just about anything that will fit in their jaws. Their jaws point up and jut out, and they all have the air of a gangster in a 1930s movie.