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Golden age of the smallmouth bass
Author agrees there is no greater thrill than getting ‘America’s fish’ hooked on your line
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The smallmouth bass has established itself as America’s fish.
Makes me proud to be an American since it has been my favorite fish for as long as I can remember.
And it’s not just me saying it. That bold assertion comes from the most knowledgeable and reliable source of fresh water angling information, In-Fisherman magazine and its co-founder Al Lindner, who has probably caught more smallmouth bass than any other angler.
The magazine, in its 50th anniversary edition last spring, said smallmouth bass “have become the darlings of the North American fishing public” and that “there’s no better time to be a smallmouth fan than right now.”
Writing last summer in a publication by the International Game Fish Association, Lindner said, “We have entered the golden age of the smallmouth bass.”
Angler interest in smallmouth bass is rising dramatically as their range expands and their size potential increases, he said.
Among smallmouth bass hotspots, Lindner mentioned the Great Lakes and the Cumberland and Tennessee river systems, as well as Mille Lacs and the upper Mississippi River, two great smallmouth fisheries close to his home in Brainerd, Minn.
In addition to the big-water anglers who (with their state of the art electronics) pursue the football-shaped specimens, Lindner also acknowledged us avid river and stream anglers “who wade and use light tackle or cast flies for bass that are pound-for-pound the toughest of all due to their constant exercise in fighting the current.”
Tasked to design the perfect fish, I would give it a hydrodynamic shape, superpiscene strength and stamina, an insatiable appetite, an affinity for pretty places, a complexion that varies from green to gold to brown, warpaint on its cheeks, eyes that can turn from black to red to fit its pugnacious personality and an abhorrence of surrender.
I make no secret of my addiction to the endorphine-releasing snick of a smallmouth inhaling my jig, the elbow-tingling impact of a fast-moving smallmouth colliding with my crank bait, or the demoralizing thrill of a smallmouth leaping from the water to kill a lure gurgling across its surface in a manner described in faux-biblical words by Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield in “Pulp Fiction”: “I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger.”
The closest I’ve ever come to swooning has been when I’ve had to look up to make eye contact with a smallmouth at the peak of its airborne bid for freedom.
I’m with Al Lindner, who wrote that he looks forward to his next smallmouth bass as eagerly as he did to the first ones that hooked him on fishing more than 70 years ago.
The most beautiful, ravenous and capture-resistant fish, the darling of American anglers, happens to be the dominant species in my home waters — the Mississippi River tributaries of Eastern Iowa. How lucky is that?
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