An un-amused Largemouth Bass gives aquarium onlookers the gas-face.

Micropterus salmoides, or commonly, the Largemouth Bass, is a large freshwater sunfish native to eastern North America. Due to human introduction, its range has expanded greatly and Largemouth Bass now populate freshwater bodies in temperate regions throughout the world.

Most people think of the Largemouth Bass as an enigma, but really, it’s the most lethal predator that Mother Nature has ever assembled.

It is widely known that the Largemouth Bass is the most aggressive aquatic animal on Earth and can easily kick the crap out of any other fish species on the planet, including whales.

The Largemouth Bass is an ambush predator and uses its disproportionately large mouth to capture its prey, which includes smaller fish, frogs, crawfish, raccoons and Labrador Retrievers.

Largemouth Bass have a terrible sense of humor and only ever laugh at one thing: the sight of a baby duckling swimming last in line behind its mother and siblings, because all the Largemouth Bass can think to himself is “Dude, this is gonna be sweet.”

This photo is a hoax. The Shark has been superimposed over a Largemouth Bass about to devour the unsuspecting Airman.

Have you ever wondered why Great White Sharks live in the ocean? It’s because they know fresh water is inhabited by Largemouth Bass. And, unfortunately for the Great White, Largemouth Bass are starting to encroach on the Shark’s territory. Remember that photo of the Blackhawk helicopter in front of the Golden Gate Bridge with the Great White Shark jumping out of the water to attack the unsuspecting Airman? As it turns out, that photo was a hoax. The person who created that image actually photoshoped the shark over a huge, hungry Largemouth Bass. And by the way, I heard that the Largemouth Bass in the original photo actually ate the dude, then dismembered everyone else in the helicopter just for fun.

Scientists have long asked themselves, “What is the preferred diet of the Largemouth Bass?” Well the answer is simple: anything that it’s pissed off at. River-dwelling Largemouth Bass have been known to decimate entire herds of Wildebeests migrating across the Serengeti.

In the summer months giant Largemouth Bass spend lots and lots of time doing absolutely nothing. It’s as if they want to show off how chill they are by barely moving all day long. Unfortunately, that lethargy can turn lethal in a heartbeat as the Largemouth Bass is extremely short-tempered and will sometimes snap and indiscriminately kill every organism in sight just because his shade moved.

A super-agitated Largemouth Bass prepares to go on a rampage and kill every living thing within a four-mile radius.

In short, never let your children swim in Largemouth Bass infested lakes and rivers. While a Largemouth Bass has never been officially implicated in any drowning incident in U.S. waters, I’m pretty sure that they are responsible for virtually all of them.

I’d say I’ve learned 90% of what I know about bass fishing from my dad.  When you consider the vast foundation of knowledge it takes just to be a decent bass angler – setups, proper knots, reading water clarity, temperature, and current, understanding the bass’ life cycle and putting together a game plan to target them – that foundational knowledge makes up the largest chunk of what we all already know about our favorite pastime.  My familiarity with different lure types and information about our local lakes and the Delta came from my Dad, as well.  Growing up, and to this day, bass fishing has been, and is, our thing.  It’s what we spend time together doing, and so there has been plenty of time for that 90% of my current knowledge to be absorbed.  Of the remaining 10 or so percent of what I know, some came from friends and some came from my own intuition and experimentation, but that sliver of knowledge that has come over the years from total strangers is probably what has surprised me the most.  Those individuals with the desire to help out, pass along, and inform those with a bit less fishing experience do a great service to the sport and to the people they educate and inspire.

Now, I’m not talking about the tournament anglers whose income and reputation depend on their performance on the water.  Obviously they have some incentive to keep a few secrets.  Nor am I talking about club anglers who want to best their buddies, being tight-lipped about where they hooked the 9-lber yesterday.  But for most of us, the 98.5% who do this primarily for fun, sharing the wealth through passing on some knowledge that helps someone just getting in to bass fishing land their first bass or a new PB can be just as rewarding as sticking that fish yourself.

I first consciously recognized the type of stranger who was willing to share the wealth after a chance meeting on the Delta.  I was 18 at the time, fishing out of the first float tube I ever owned.   This guy was in his 40′s, fishing off an expensive bass boat, and was obviously a very good stick, as I’d watched him hook a number of quality fish on a topwater lure in about an hour’s time.

He soon quietly toed his way up to me and asked how I’d been doing.  I was having a tough time that day.  He flipped over his confidence bait, explained what it was and how to work it, and suggested I get a few.  The bait was the Fenwick Spittin’ Minnow, and he told me about how successful he had been with it.  I bought one the following day, and I still use it.  In fact, it’s tied on one of my rods right now.  Fenwick no longer makes this bait, but I still catch fish on it regularly using the technique that guy explained to me.  I never asked him his name, nor did he ask mine.  But the fact that he enjoyed sharing his knowledge with me stuck as a pretty admirable quality, and now that I’m that older, more experienced guy in the expensive boat makes me want to share what I can with younger fishermen… and continue to learn from all of you guys.

To me, that is really what this sport and this website is all about.

To comment on this article, please visit the ‘Front Page Articles’ section of the forums

Contributed by:  Murf

For those with sophisticated electronic equipment, finding where the fish are holding under difficult conditions is the easy part. For many of us who fish regularly from personal watercraft and don’t have the luxury of sonar to locate fish, we have to rely more on our instincts and knowledge of the water body and bass behavior. Either way, once you’re confident about where the fish are, enticing those reluctant fish to react to your offering is the real challenge in most cases.

One thing you might consider next time you’re up against long odds for success is to let go of that instinct to fish big tackle and big baits for big fish, and lighten up.

Lighten up your line, that is. If you regularly toss swimbaits or 1oz jigs on 20lb+ line, consider the fact that spooky fish can see, and feel through vibration, big line moving through the water.

Let the lure’s design do the work for you. Take the very best of “strike on the fall” lures as examples. A Senko, or a Colorado Blade Spinnerbait, both can be very productive offerings when pitched to a strategic spot and allowed to fall on slack line. The design of these lures provides for a very realistic appearance when the fall is not impeded by taught line. Line drag is another factor that can negatively affect their presentation, and since 10lb mono has a lot less drag than 20lb mono, you’ll be offering a much more enticing bait with the smaller line.

Sure, bigger line gives you the ability to horse in lunkers without worry. But if you never hook those lunkers due to compromised presentation, you’ll never have the opportunity to take advantage of the power that the larger line provides.

You can fish the same 5 or 6 inch Senko on 10lb mono with a 1/0 wide gap hook much more effectively under difficult conditions than you can with 20lb line and a 3/0 hook. Unless you’re fishing heavy mats or docks, with a good hookset, a well set drag, and some patience, and you can land any size bass on 10lb line. And you’re much more likely to get that hookup in the first place.

To comment on this article, please visit the ‘Front Page Articles’ section of the forums.

The Hot-Spot Review - Coyote Percs
Since I’ve had some success over the years on these ponds, including a great recent outing with two other SJBers, and since there seems to be a growing interest among SJBers about this place, I decided to do a review and pass on what I’ve learned about these ponds – and ask that you all contribute any additional wisdom you may have – in hopes of encouraging more folks to check this place out and hopefully hook some decent fish while they’re at it.

We’ve seen these water bodies referred to by at least three different names on SJB over the past month or so; I and others have referred to them as the “Morgan Hill Percs,” and we’ve all read posts and reports from other SJB members who call them the “101 ponds” (due to their visibility from Hwy 101) or the “RC ponds” (due to their proximity to the RC airfield.) This series of percolation ponds is located just east of Monterey Road between Live Oak and Palm Avenues in Santa Clara County’s Coyote Creek Park Greenway. If we really wanted to be accurate in our reference to these ponds, we would call them the Coyote Percs, because they are part of the Coyote Creek groundwater recharge system and because they are located neither in Morgan Hill nor in San Jose, but in the small county area of Coyote… a town of sorts, although it’s not incorporated. So, from here forth I shall refer to these ponds as the Coyote Percs.

Tunis provided a description of the origin and purpose of this series of man-made ponds in a recent thread.

If you haven’t yet dropped a line here, you should add it to your list of places to fish this summer. It is best fished by tube or pontoon, but fishable water can be accessed from the shoreline if you’re willing to hike a bit between casts.

There’s probably no chance of hooking a world-record largemouth in these impoundments, but 4 to 5 pound fish are common if you know how to target them.

Conditions – I’ve found that larger fish in these ponds tend to relate to current, cover, and wind more than they do to water temperature or depth, especially during mid-daylight hours. These ponds will stratify (have distinct temperature layers) during the summer, but the dissolved oxygen content of the water is probably more dependent on current and wind than it is on temperature, so you can find active bass in warmer waters than you normally would in larger impoundments. Large bass here are by far more reactive under windy conditions, along the wind-blown banks (the banks receiving wind and wave ripples,) for probably two reasons. First off, because the wave action provides for a higher oxygen content in the water. Secondly, because the surface ripples create a visual boundary between the fish and the angler… if the fish can’t see you, she is less likely to turn a cold shoulder to your offering. Surface ripples also diminish the surface disruption your bait makes when it lands on the water, providing for a softer entry that is less likely to spook a big bass.

Approaches and Baits – The majority of fish caught in these ponds come on weightless Senkos flipped to the tule edges around the islands. Concentrate on sparse outcroppings that offer big bass the opportunity to back in and surround themselves with cover while facing open water.

Another good approach, and one that is likely to produce a bigger bite, is to pitch a bulkier bait such as a Jig or a Texas-rigged craw or lizard to the tree lines along the main banks. Most of your bites on these types of offerings will come on the fall, just as they do on Senkos. Go light with your sinker or jig head to produce a slow fall. Zipper worms, with their exaggerated surface area, will produce a slow fall if you need to increase weight size to overcome windy conditions.

If you’re fishing from the bank, try a lipless sinking crankbait near moving water. Remove the front treble hook so the bait won’t pick up the multitude of weeds that line the bottom of these ponds. Cast out at a 45 degree angle, let the lure sink to the bottom, and retrieve on tight line at a speed just slow enough to keep the nose of the lure in contact with the bottom. This mimics a sculpin or craw bouncing off the cobble bottom, and will entice bass from a larger area than the precision pitched plastic baits. I’ve also witnessed a guy hook and land a 12lb channel cat fishing this method, so make sure your hat’s on snugly.

Larger fish in these waters feast on the abundant bluegill, so chartreuse spinnerbaits and chatterbaits with gold blades also work well. Cast and retrieve parallel to the bank to lure active fish out of the cover. This method can be employed from the bank or from a personal craft.

Under windless conditions, if you’ve got a cool hand and a quiet pitch, as well as polarized sunglasses, you can get good numbers of bass by sight fishing. Under glassy conditions, I’ve had very little luck noisily chuckin’ and pluggin’ here, so I’ll usually try quietly walking (or kicking) around the ponds, keeping a low profile while looking for sunning bass. If you can spot them and gently put a weightless offering on their nose, they’ll take it about half the time.

Access – Travelling north on Monterey Road, turn right onto Barnhart Ave. If you arrive before 8:00am or plan on staying till after sunset, park outside of the gate at location 1 (Click on Aerial Photo to enlarge.)

If you go during the day and have a vehicle that can handle light to moderate off-road conditions, you can drive down to a convenient launching site at location 2. If you’d like to access the northern-most ponds only, turn right onto Ogier Ave off on Monterey and park at location 3.

There are four main ponds at this site. Pond A is the one used primarily by the RC club and in my experience is not worth fishing anyways. Pond B is the easiest to access and in my opinion produces the most fish. Pond C will produce bigger fish, by consensus of most anglers that I’ve talked to and in my own experience as well. I’ve only fished in Pond D once, and I had to access it by launching in Pond C and taking a tube ride through the swift chute of river that connects these two ponds. I’m not sure if Pond D can be accessed by foot.

Now, back to the first paragraph, where I told you I’d be looking for your input as well… While I do claim to know something about the Coyote Percs, and I hope that this advice will be helpful for those members who are not familiar with this hot-spot, I certainly do not know everything, and would appreciate it if other members could add to what I’ve suggested here – or tell me (and everyone else) if you disagree with something I’ve said. After talking with Marce about this idea, a new website feature was born for SJB:

The New Website Feature – Comments Section

Marce has already begun implementing a comments section as an appendix to the front-page, entitled “Front Page Articles” to give you all a forum for adding to or providing your opinions on what is published on the SJB front page. The comments section will be particularly useful to SJB members when a front page article’s subject is a product review, or a review of a specific fishery, such as this installment. We will provide a link at the end of each article to the comments thread created for the article. You can also access this section directly from the Forums page.

To comment on this article or the new website feature, click here.

Contributed by: Murf

Let me start by disclosing my preferred conditions for the very best of fishing days: I like full lakes. I like high tide on the Delta. I like as much cover available to bass to be submerged, because I know that’s when they’ll be the most aggressive and easiest to target.

That being said, I also value summers on Santa Clara Valley lakes like this one will be. We just went through what water supply professionals categorize as a poor water year, a year in which we didn’t receive enough rainfall in the past winter and spring to fully recharge ground-water supplies to levels that will keep our reservoirs and percolation ponds full throughout the summer.

Some anglers like the low water conditions we will see on our water bodies this summer, because it provides for conditions in which lots of fish will congregate to the few deep water locations hospitable for over-summering bass. The fish will be there, and if you can figure out how to pattern them, you could conceivably hook a number of quality fish from one point regularly. Unfortunately, most fish turn completely indifferent to our various offerings under these conditions, which makes catching them difficult despite the fact that we know exactly where they are holding.

With water levels low, there is one thing you can do to greatly increase your hook-up to cast ratio – not for this season, but for next spring – Lace up your hiking boots and go on an exploration to study the exposed bottom of your favorite lake.

An almost-empty lake is an educational opportunity for a bass angler. Take a notebook and pencil, or a digital camera if that’s more your style. Look for and record exposed terrain and structures that are under water in most years. Notice any obvious drop-offs, rock outcroppings, brush piles, sunken boats, or fallen trees. Look for historic creek channels that may harbor cold water refuges for fish in summers when the reservoir is full. The prime spawning bed that you stumble upon on dry land in August will likely hold a trophy female next May once the reservoir is holding more water and the fish are bedding.

Look for upward-elevation landmarks to describe the locations of the prime cover and beds you discover during your low-lake hikes, and draw yourself a map, noting normal and periodic high water levels of the reservoir. Highlight shallow water cover and spawning areas that have close access to deeper water. Return to those spots and hit them relentlessly when the lake levels rise again, and you’ll be targeting the best spots for big bass on your favorite lake.