Ever Had a Double?
A few weeks ago, I had a call from a member of the local Chamber of Commerce asking me if he could tag along on my next
fishing trip. I was pre-fishing for an upcoming Tournament, so I told him to meet me
at the ramp the next morning. I was a little
nervous because he told me he had never been bass fishing before and I didn’t know what he would expect. Unlike on TV, real bass don’t commit
suicide on every cast...or do they?
We left the ramp and ran to one of my favorite canals. I knew the
bass were beginning to move into the canals to bed and was hoping to
catch a few good ones for my guest. It was a warm morning, so after settling down I cast a Devil’s Horse
top water lure toward a sea wall. I wasn’t expecting much, but I decided to use a top water lure just to get my arms moving.
I hadn’t moved the bait more than a few times when the canal exploded under my lure. I struck the fish and immediately felt the
weight of a big bass. But something was wrong. The fish stayed down and sort of just wiggled at the bottom of the canal. I slowly worked
the fish to the boat wondering what in the world I had hooked. As the fish came to the top I was surprised to find two three-pound
bass hooked on my lure. To say the guy with me was impressed was an understatement. It will take me a while to get over this guy telling
everyone in Lake County that I catch two bass on every cast!
In forty years of fishing, I have only had this happen three times. The first time, I actually got to see how it happens. I was
16 years old at the time and was fishing on a small catwalk hanging
over a canal. The bass were schooling directly under me and would
come up every now and then to hit shad that were circling below.
Each time the bass would start chasing the shad, I would lower my lure into the water and
catch one. One time I lowered the lure and hung a nice bass that immediately ran out into the center of the canal
and started jumping on top of the water. I could see everything because I was at least 10 feet above the water
level. In the middle of one
of the jumps, a huge bass tried to take the lure away and got hooked at the same time. I was using a spinning rod with 10-pound test.
Through some miracle I was able to work the two fish to the bank. The bigger bass weighed 6 ¼ pounds and the small bass weighed about
3. Why doesn’t that ever happen in a tournament?
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