Kensico Bass

Temperatures are high, as is the water on most streams- so I took a break from the trout and hit Kensico for some bass fishing this morning. It's known mostly for its trout fishing, but this reservoir is just full of largemouth and smallmouth bass and they are a blast to catch on the fly. One area in particular is the ideal habitat: flats, drop offs, submerged logs and lots of the rocky structure that smallmouths thrive in. I drifted along the shoreline here and threw a popper at any structure I could see in the clear water. The action was almost nonstop. Every few casts a dark shadow would dart out from cover and just smash the popper on the surface. Or some would leisurely inspect the fly for a minute and then pounce when I gave it a twitch.

Every fish was a scrappy fighter, but one almost took me into the backing. I set the hook and the bass just took off on an immediate, powerful run. I made the mistake of letting it go, thinking I was in deep water and in the clear. Nope. It quickly took most of my line and then just stopped. Naturally, it had found a log on the bottom and gotten tangled up. I rowed over and tried to free it, but it managed to break the tippet and escape with my favorite Orvis sneaky pete. I did get to see it briefly underwater- a football of a largemouth. Definitely would have been the largest fish of the day. Lesson learned. With the 4x tippet I had on, I should have put more pressure on and stopped that run. Those bass dudes on TV horse them in for a reason- bass always run for cover. All in all, it was a really fun morning on the water. If it wasn't so damn hot I could have stayed there all day.