Warmwater Bonanza: Bass, Bluegills and a Bowfin

Better late than never, I finally got the canoe out last week. Our older son was thrilled to get on the water and we paddled straight for the southeast corner of the lake, which features a nice drop-off and plenty of weed beds. We caught a medium-sized largemouth bass from the weeds on a silver spinner followed by a bowfin. In case you're wondering, bowfin are native to the US as well as southern Canada. They are the only surviving species of an order of ancient fish, having swim bladders that function as primitive lungs. They regularly come to the surface to gulp air and favor weedy, shallow fringes, just like largemouth bass. They eat smaller fish, which explains why this particular bowfin went for my spinner.

I thought that I had caught a pike because the bowfin shot out of the weeds, rolled over on striking the lure and immediately starting jumping and thrashing. It was about two feet long and bent over double on itself when it jumped. Pretty feisty little pike, right? Wrong. When I landed the fish I realized what I had. So, how do you hold a bowfin? I wasn't about to stick my thumb in its mouth like a bass, so I decided to grab it like a pike, behind the gills. That worked about long enough to get the hook out of his mouth, when he really went nuts and I lost my grip on him. Hence, no pictures of my first bowfin.

We did locate a nice school of pumpkinseed bluegills a little later. They were in shallow water and ready to take flies. I recently cleaned up my oldest 4-weight trout rod and replaced the line, so I gave that a shot. You can see the handle of it in the picture of my son with the bass. The new line (it is actually an old one that I got on clearance years ago as a spare) was just the ticket and that old outfit casts better than ever. We caught some pumpkinseeds on a little fuzzy nymph then retired for the day. I'm getting anxious for autumn so that I can get the old 4-weight out on a trout stream.