Chester Allen's Watery Planet

Eager panfish save the night for a bumbling bass angler

I had planned to spend Thursday evening pestering Puget Sound sea-run cutthroat trout during the incoming tide. But the warm and humid afternoon -- the air felt thick -- got me thinking about largemouth bass whacking popping bugs burbling across a glassy lake.

So, that's where I found myself an hour later. The lake looked like a mirror, and the water smelled like a mix of wet mud and the weird --almost fruity -- scent of panfish.  This little lake is a pretty popular spot, but most anglers fish it for hatchery rainbow trout -- and ignore the nice largemouth bass, bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish that knock around in the weedy shallows.

In fact, holdover rainbow trout were lazily rising -- stringing rings along the water -- to a nice hatch of big midges. I might have been tempted to hook one or two of those fish myself -- setting up on a trout porpoising on glassy water is one of the elegant moments in fly fishing -- but my trout gear was at home.

I noticed lots of dinner-plate-sized clearings on the bottom -- mostly in shallow water near the shore. All the mud and weeds and junk had been cleared away, and I knew bluegill and their colorful cousins -- the pumpkinseed sunfish -- had created nests on the bottom. Little male bluegill and pumpkinseeds each patrolled their own nest, and I knew they would whack any fly dropped in their territory. 

But I wanted to hook the females, which tend to run a little bigger. I cast my fly -- a bead-head Cate's Turkey variation -- to the deeper, weedy water just a few feet away from the shallow nests. The weeds in this lake create green forests that blanket the bottom and reach for the surface. I felt like I was floating over a submerged patch of thick woods. 

After a few casts, my line tightened, and a fat little pumpkinseed was Frisbeeing around the float tube.

Pumpkinseeds are as gorgeous as a tropical fish on a Hawaiian reef. Blue streaks decorate their faces, their bellies are bright orange and a tiny red dot decorates that little tab on their gills. Pumpkinseeds never get very big, but they are super aggressive, fight hard and taste really good when filleted, rolled in cornmeal and dropped into hot oil.

I decided to keep four or five fish and have a lakeside dinner. My camp stove and cooking gear were in the Subaru -- and it's funny how often I bring kitchen stuff along when I'm fishing warmwater lake in early summer.

It looked like this fish was about to lay her eggs, but I kept her anyway. Panfish -- such as bluegill and pumpkinseeds -- are very good parents, and they can easily overpopulate a lake and start stunting out. Keeping a few panfish for supper is actually good for the lake. And the fish are a delicious, guilt-free meal.

This is a great time to take kids or new anglers fishing. Just about every lake or pond in western Washington and Oregon -- and the rest of the United States as well -- has hungry panfish. The fish hang out in big schools around weedbeds, sunken trees and boat docks.

I kept four fish in the little mesh bag that hangs in the water from a ring on my float tube -- and then rerigged for bass. A foam popper -- I learned to tie it when a good angler named Gene Trump created a little tutorial on the Westfly.com website -- was soon plopping into the the nooks and crannies along the shoreline.

In this lake, the bass often spawn right after the panfish, so I suspected the bass would be shallow and jumpy and aggressive. And late spring is the best time of year to fish for shallow largemouth bass.

Gene Trump's popper worked great -- four bass took it down in 90 minutes of casting -- but operator error bungled the hookset every time. I have a bad habit of setting with my rod -- as if I were fishing a dry fly for trout.  It's best to just keep stripping line until you feel the fish when a bass whacks a floating popper. Setting up with the rod is a dumb move.

Yeah, I yanked that popper right out of the gaping mouths of those bass. I'm always a little jumpy and squirrelly on the first trip or two when fishing poppers for bass. I do wish I had hooked at least one of those bass, as this lake grows thick, hefty fish with green sides and pearl-white bellies.

After a while, I started watching the bluegill and pumpkinseed nests. The fish each had a nest, and there was a lot of fin-flaring and tail-chasing whenever another male got too close to the clean gravel. I lost track of time while gazing at the little fish, and it was soon time to get out, clean the fish and fry up the little fillets.

Bats were flapping over the lake as I waited for the oil to heat up, and it was still light at 8:45 p.m.

I love this time of year -- especially the long evenings with thick, moist air -- and the electric tugs of amped-up panfish.

Yellow perch hotspot brings on the first -- but not last -- leak in semi-new waders

A fat Summit Lake yellow perch on a pair of waders that later popped their first-ever leak.

This was a good afternoon -- it finally stopped pouring rain every 30 minutes -- to start the spring search for smallmouth bass in Summit Lake.

Summit Lake is about 20 minutes from my home in Olympia, Washington, and I've been trying to nail down rumors of fish-per-cast smallmouth bass fishing for the past two years. I've caught the odd smallmouth bass, but never anything approaching Bass-O-Rama.

I'm not sure that is completely bad  -- this is mostly a planted rainbow trout and kokanee lake, with a few wild cutthroat trout that come in out of feeder streams. That means whatever smallies live in the lake arrived by Bucket Biologists. Bucket Biologists seem to be on a never-ending mission to introduce bass -- and panfish -- to every lake in the Northwest.

Of course, Bucket Biology is illegal and has ruined or damaged some spectacular trout fisheries in Oregon and Washington.

Anyway, I went out to find and pester the bass, but, as usual, I found a nice school of big yellow perch. For some reason, Summit Lake -- at least the part I suspect holds smallmouth bass -- is thick with big yellow perch.  Now, this may mean that the smallmouth live in a completely different part of the lake -- does anyone else hear the "Monty Python" theme music here?. 

Or it may well mean I have the concentration skills of a squirrel, and the bass have evaded me once again.

Anyway -- concentration issues aside -- I'm not one to frown at fat, 10-inch-long yellow perch hanging out on a sunken weedbed near a dock complex. I'm just the guy to keep tossing that olive Woolly Bugger in there and lifting out perch.

I don't want to brag, but I have a weird relationship with yellow perch. If they're around, I'll probably hook them -- and they're often kinda big. I know of two spots on the Columbia River where I can't keep big yellow perch off my line during the summer. And, of course, there is Summit Lake.

I would rather have this kind of relationship with winter steelhead or 20-inch-long brown trout, but so it goes....

Anyway, I got my handy nylon mesh bag out of my float tube pocket, tied the string to a handy loop and slipped in the first yellow perch. A mesh laundry bag is a great livewell for panfish days while fishing a float tube or pontoon.  I cast again, and another fattie perch whacked the Woolly Bugger on the drop.

I kept four perch and started kicking toward the shore. It was lunchtime, and my Coleman stove, frying pan and corn meal were in the Subaru. An early dinner, cooked and eaten in the little lakeshore parking lot, seemed like a fine idea.

As I kicked -- and thought of hot, crisply fried, succulent perch -- I suddenly felt a damp, cold patch on my shin.

My Simms waders -- in service for about a year -- had popped their first leak. I always think of that first leak as the beginning of the end. Sure, you patch the waders, and everything is fine for a while. But, sooner rather than later, another leak pops up.

Eventually, goopy patches are all over the waders, and I start wondering whether a new leak will happen every time I put my feet into the waders. So, I dread that first leak.

I once had a pair of breathable waders -- not-so-expensive breathable waders -- go for three years without a leak. I use my waders a few times a week, so this was fabulous performance. Of course, the waders slid downhill fast after the first leak showed up.

I bought another pair of the same waders, and they leaked on the second trip. They came with a guarantee, so I sent them in. Those waders eventually ended up spending more time in the shop than a 1975 Ford Pinto.

Now, I'm pretty happy with my Simms waders, and they may last for another year or two. But they may not, and I might have to wade through the fly shop selection, dig out my credit card and hope for the best.

It was something to think about as the perch fillets turned golden-brown in the frying pan.

An summery evening with the bluegill, the yellow perch and the crappie....

Bluegill -- even little bluegill like this fish hooked Friday evening -- have a subtle beauty.

MILLERSYLVANIA STATE PARK -- The sun beat down on the Subaru Friday afternoon, and it felt a lot hotter than the 74-degree readout on the dashboard.

It felt like summer. It felt like humid, warm, panfish weather.

I was done with work for the week, and I was hungry to get away from all complicated things. I just wanted to cast and feel the wiggle of a few fish.

  The tides didn't look great for sea-run cutthroat trout in Puget Sound, most parts of western Washington rivers are closed until June 1, and I wasn't up to elbowing my way onto local lakes warming up for the weekend.

I needed something out of the way of other anglers, jet skis and any kind of ruckus. I needed bluegill, crappie, pumpkinseed sunfish -- the aggressive, snappy fish of summer evenings since I was a kid.

Then I thought of a shallow, weedy bay at Deep Lake -- which is actually a small, not-so-deep lake at Millersylvania State Park. I knew other anglers would probably fish the main part of the lake for stocker rainbows and some pretty big pre-spawn bass.

I also suspected that the hot sun would warm up that shallow, weedy bay -- and rev up the panfish. Shallow bays -- especially ones with dark bottoms and a lot of weeds, get bass and panfish cranked up long before the rest of the cold lake turns on. I got out of Olympia before rush hour hit -- and was walking toward that bay 20 minutes after leaving work.

Midges were hatching, and swirly rises dotted the bay. I could tell that the fish rising in deeper water were stocker rainbow trout -- with maybe some bigger holdovers from last year.

The smaller, bubblier rises nearer shore were bluegill, pumpkinseed sunfish, crappie and a few yellow perch. I got out my panfish fly box -- which is a collection of tattered, used trout nymphs, dry flies -- and a few tiny Woolly Buggers and Clouser Minnows I tie especially for crappie.

The water smelled like wet dirt and growing weeds -- fertile and full of life. I tied on a size 14 Copper John nymph -- it lost its tail on Oregon's Deschutes River sometime last year, but panfish don't care -- and cast it toward a sunken tree that poked out of the water near a weedbed.

I imagined that bright fly -- early season panfish love shiny, metallic flies here in western Washington -- slowly sinking toward a mixed school of bluegill, pumpkinseeds and crappie. The line suddenly tightened all by itself, and a nice bluegill planed off on to the side.

Playing a nice bluegill is like trying to reel in a Frisbee -- they slide through the water from one side to another.

A minute later, the bluegill was in the shoreline stew of duckweed, last year's broken, rotting reeds and emerging green plants. The fish glowed in the soft light, and I felt a connection to the scabby-kneed, bluegill hunter I was as a fifth grader in 1971.

The weekend -- one that started like a summer weekend -- was off to a great start.