A Perfect Evening

Dictionary.com defines perfect as excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement; somehow complete beyond improvement is very fitting for an early September night that my buddy Frank Terkhorn and I recently had. We had made our way north and east to Morgantown to fish a lake that Frank had gotten permission on…and as they say, the rest is history.

The lake was about 15 acres and after meeting with landowner Jim we made our way down to the dam, placed all our gear in our float tubes and went in different directions (great thing about fishing with a leftie). I had two rods along; a 3 weight with floating line and a 4 weight with type 2 sink tip line. The lake was a bit stained and looked to be the color of a weak glass of tea…thus I had a white streamer on one rod and yellow on the other.

I quickly deduced that yellow wasn’t working after casting for about 25 minutes without even a hit…so I traded the 4 weight rod for my 3 weight with the white weighted streamer and a couple casts later I had landed the first bass of the night. Before the night was over I would land another 40 or so bass in the 12 inch range. Interestingly enough there were two hornets nests that had been built just a few inches above the water…no sure if the old timers had it right or not but I used to hear that the lower the nests were to the ground the milder our winter would be…guess we can hope?

I continued to work my way around the perimeter of the lake; Frank was now nowhere to be seen as he had disappeared into a cove directly across from me…I made a cast under an overhanging limb when I felt tension on my line and without thinking strip set with me left hand. Immediately I could tell that I was hooked into something large as it began to tow me out toward the middle of the lake. As we were driving to the lake Frank had told me that on the first trip to the lake he had caught a large blue catfish that had given him quite a tussle. My thoughts quickly turned to the fact that I was more than likely attached to a sizeable and upset catfish…fact is that I didn’t really even get excited because I have caught enough of these big cats and other than a constant tug on the line they aren’t too exciting to land.

I made an adjustment to my reel and tightened the drag so that it could do the work…what felt like minutes was probably only about 4-5 minutes; I was now starting to tire the fish and could feel it getting closer when up out of the water came a bass! No catfish…a big bass and it made quite a jump and splash right at the foot of my float tube. To say the least I immediately became more interested and used my kick fins to pull the lunker back out toward the middle of the water, away from any trouble that the fish could get me into.

The minutes went by and eventually my trophy was out of gas; I reached down with my line hand and lipped what would be a 21-22 inch largemouth that I guessed would weigh in the 6 pound range. It was a beauty of a fish with a tummy that told me it wasn’t hurting at all for food. I snapped a few photos then ran my stringer through its bottom lip and attached it to the side of my tube. I continued to move and catch fish around the outside of the lake and in about a half hour met Frank. He asked how things had gone and I told him I had caught a bunch of small bass. He too told me about the many smallish bass he had caught, along with a nice bluegill and a 12 inch crappie that he had placed on his stringer. I kind of played it off and let him know that catching little bass is still fun…but not as fun as landing the big ones.

I spun my float tube around and hauled the big fish up out of the water…the look on Frank’s face was classic. He was very excited to see such a nice bass; being a true friend he was both delighted I had caught a fish and gracious enough to be legitimately excited for me. We took some photos and talked a bit about where and how I had caught the fish…I released the big bass back into its home waters and the two of us continued on our journey back towards our starting point.

I made it back around about a half hour ahead of Frank, yanked my boat up out of the water and just sat and enjoyed a perfect night. No humidity, no bugs, a beautiful landscape in front of me and a good friend to share it all with. The reflections of the trees on the water was exceptional and I took a bunch of nice photos…if you’d like to see a video of the big bass along with some nice photos of Frank in his float tube, click here to watch the video.

Nature, simply put…is awesome. This was indeed a perfect evening as two good friends shared stories, fished a bit and had the opportunity to be out on a night where God was just “showing-off” a bit! Autumn is just around the corner and is without a doubt my favorite time of the year. Make a point to get out and get going; grab a pole, a gun, a camera or a walking stick…just make some time to Enjoy the Great Outdoors.