The Pits

Saturday night my new fishing buddy Charles called to invite me to fish one of his secret fishing spots Sunday. I accepted and come 6am we were on our way to “the pit.” The Pit is a gravel companies dredger pond that is hidden out in the country. I fished there once and had some success with a silver and green cast master.

Charles purchased some minnows and we gave them a try. The bass seem to hold somewhere around 5 feet along the steep banks but maybe that is just because most of the banks are steep. The water is fairly clear so you can see the bass holding down low and throwing topwater doesn’t seem to attract them at all. 

I tossed in my kastmaster first and Charless threw a spin bait. I had one on but it got away as it approached the bank. Eventually I switched to a minnow under a bobber with a split shot close to the hook. After a few seconds in the water, it was fish on. A small bass but it killed the skunk for me. Charles also ended up catching a small one. He kept telling me he was seeing big ones but I wasn’t seeing them. 

Charles walked around the pond a bit and I stayed in the same spot. Little by little more bass popped out of the depths to devour my minnow or at the very least to stare at them.  I finally saw a large one that was around 3 lbs but couldn’t catch him. 

The walk around the Pits is a deceiving one. What seems like good hard ground will all of a sudden give out underneath you and you find yourself hip deep in a thick, clay-like mud.  The only solution is to tread lightly, especially if you are a big guy like me. 

The further we went around the pond and the more fish we caught off of minnows. My best fish of the day was about a pound and a half and quickly flopped away, snapping the hook off of my line as I tried to take a picture. This wasn’t good because the walk around the pond was a long one and wouldn’t you know it, we both left our tackle boxes at spot #1. I sat there, looking at bass with a good amount of minnows to use, my rod with kastmaster tied on and no hooks to use. What did I do? I took the treble hook off of the kastmaster and tied it on to my line, which weighed the minnows down a bit but it got the job done. 

I did manage to see some fat 6-8lb bass swimming a bit deeper in the water. I tossed my minnow in hopes of catching one. My heart dropped as one of them swam up to it, seemed to taste it and quickly let it go.  I was devastated! From then on I caught a few more and Charles went back to the other side to get our bags which were unattended. Now, remember the “soft mud” thing I was saying? Well Charles didn’t. At one point he started whistling at me to come back, packed up his things and headed to his car. I took the long trip back to spot #1 and went to the car. It turns out he sank into the mud, twisted his ankle and lost his shoe in the process. Fortunately his ankle wasn’t too bad and he was able to get his shoe back. 

In all it was a 16 fish day which is pretty darn good. I look forward to trying to catch some of the big boys and also taking my 8wt out there to give it a workout. I personally had a 10 fish day which is cool. 

Total fish: 10 Largemouth Bass