Nearly everywhere we went on the lake, we were stymied by carp. The brute fish were in full spawning mode with pairs, trios, quartets and quintets erupting on the surface. One large backwater looked like a bubbling field of hot springs at Yellowstone. As it turned out, wherever the carp were in profusion we couldn’t catch bass, certainly not many bass. I sympathized, could anyone eat amid all this sexual excitement?
Eventually Sean Lewis and I headed out to a main lake bay on Virginia’s Lake Gaston and began working the dark circles of a submerged stump field. The water was a tad dark but the irregular circles were as clear as coasters on a wet bar.
Concentrating on a large stump some 40 feet from the bank, Lewis snapped his wrists to set the hook but came up empty. As we worked down the flat-fronted shoreline, the stumps remained widely scattered and washed by a current; unfortunately Lewis repeated his frustrating hook action.
Using a long trick worm and a wide gap Gamakatsu 1/0 hook he was getting a few bites but couldn’t make a true connection. The light wire hook was need for the needle thin six-inch Big Bite Baits “Squirrel Tail Worm” in Tilapia/Tilapia Tail and would later prove very effective.
“You know,” he said, “crappie will spawn on these stumps sometimes, they could be crappie.”
This fact would have been fine had we been fishing for crappie — and come equipped with crappie size baits — but our quarry was largemouth.
Eventually we made are way down to the end of the bay with more and more stumps shimmering just under the surface. As the lake circled to an end near an elevated rural road, the stumps were stacked thick and without a washing current.
At another dark disk, Lewis made a solid connection with a two-plus pounder; soon after another decent bass whacked his trick worm and held on. In a few casts at this dense stump field with still-water and little carp action, I hung a bass close to four pounds. The stumps at the back of the bay proved a bonanza.
As Lewis and I fished this spring day, stump beds were the place to go – but not any stump beds. We caught 90 percent of all of our largemouth from shaved tree trucks in secluded spots — currentless coves, backwaters, the back ends of large main lake bays and behind points — but not from stump fields along the main front of the shoreline.
I reminded myself of a similar experience with pro Zell Rowland one spring on Lake Seminole, which might as well be called Lake Stumpbed. After a hearty breakfast at the old Jack Wingate cabin-restaurant, the best bite was in places where the waves did not wash onto the stumps or the prevailing current left the wood alone.
Beside this wood we dropped soft-plastic creature baits of the brand then called Riverside, since known as Yum. Finding the deeper roots besides the old lumber produced a number of Seminole lunkers.
With Lewis on Gaston, the stump bass were in two moods.
A few were actually bedding atop the cupped wooden circles – it was a new moon and a small cadre of bass had come in for more spawning – but the vast majority of largemouth had taken up stump stations for ambush and feeding, feasting on various fry. Unlike bedding bass which can take the patience of Job, or Lewis, to catch, the feeders were aggressive fish, hitting our baits as soon as they dived into the roots.
My bait du jour was an eighth-ounce slider-type head with a four-inch Gary Yamamoto spider grub, D/T H-Grub, a spider grub, in watermelon/black & red.
I reasoned that because Gaston was discolored from recent rains, a small but bulky bait would present a compact but wider profile that could be seen. From the number of hits I took on the grub, I was pleased with my choice.
Actually it was the cloudy nature of the water that Lewis suspected kept Gaston’s largemouth on the shallow stumps. The water temperature was in the low 70s, temperate enough so that the fish did not yet require deep water and sufficiently murky to diffuse the sun’s rays.
Across bass fishing America, stumps exist in many lakes. It is reasonable to expect that in the post-spawn many fish will stay or gravitate to these wooded areas before the water temperature becomes too warm. Fishing this wood can be a good ticket to success.
Sean Lewis and Robert Bondurant at Twin Lakes Outfitters, South Hill, Va. are available for guided trip on Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island) and Lake Gaston. Call 434-447-2710 or twinlakesoutfitters@yahoo.com