Author: Guide

Water stained; 62 degrees; 824.80′:

Largemouth are very good on creek points and rip rap along seawalls of bays and pockets using white/chartreuse 7/16 oz. Terminator tungsten
spinnerbaits (www.terminatorlures.com), greenbug Photon crankbaits (www.photonlures.com) and Texas rigged black-blue flake Whacky Sticks
(www.cremelure.com).

Stripers are fair at first light under birds around Lighthouse Point using Snap Back jerkbaits rigged on Bait Jerker Hooks (www.falconlures.com), topwater walkers and Rat-L-Traps (www.rat-l-trap.com).

White Bass good at daylight along 20′ channel breaklines on 1/8 oz. Tiny Traps, Spoiler Shads or white grubs and Shad Raps fished through schools of whites.

Crappie are good to on docks with brushpiles and bridge pilings using 1/32 oz. Curb’s crappie jigs, blue/silver Tube jigs and live minnows.

To book a guided fishing trip w/ the only fulltime professional guides fishing LBJ for over 40 years contact JR’s Guide Service(www.jrguideservice.com). Call (830) 833-5688 or email: jimfish@moment.net. – Lake Mohave

Tell us about upcoming tournaments, marina openings, boat shows, safety concerns, environmental issues, tournament results, your favorite chow stops, big fish, new motels or any other news you think might interest bass fishing members.

Compose your ews offline in your favorite word processor. Spellcheck it and proof read it before bosting.

Follow the Submit News link in the Main Menu. – Lake Mohave

Water gin clear; 62 degrees; 909.50′:

Largemouth are very good early to 6 lbs in 6′-12′ on transition points & at the mouth of feeder creeks on Rat-L-Traps ( www.rat-l-traps ), green pumpkin Whacky Sticks (www.cremelure.com) and 7/16 oz. white Terminator tungsten spinnerbaits ( www.terminatorlures.com ). Upriver, working flats in 2′-8′ along channel turns with stumps and stickups using Pop R’s, 1/8 oz. Tiny T buzzbaits and wacky rigged plastic stickbaits like a 4″ watermelon-red Whacky Stick rigged on a 3/0 “K” Wacky Hook all produce.

Smallmouth are good over rock piles in 5′-14′ on white Photon crankbaits (www.photonlures.com), smoke-red Snap Back tubes on jigheads and 3″ smoke grubs.

Stripers are fair to 25″ under birds at daylight on the surface in open water trolling Hyper Striper jigs, vertically jigging silver Pirk Minnows and cranking big Shad Raps and plastic swim baits.

For area information, accommodations, or to book a guided trip w/the most experienced, Fulltime, professional guide service fishing Canyon for 40 years contact JR’s Guide Service (www.jrguideservice.com). Call Jim at: (830) 833-5688 or email jimfish@moment.net. Your most convenient bait and tackle dealer to the upper end and Guadalupe River on the south side of the lake is Canyon Bait House, 15695 Cranes Mill Rd., (830) 899-9747. – Lake Mohave

The skateboarding scene in Arizona is amazing. It offers boundless street spot’s and has a wide variety of free parks for everyone to enjoy. Summers are really hot but if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen. The winters offer an excellent twenty four hour a day session. Beutiful weather and down to earth people. So if you are ever out this way don’t be afraid to come see how the locals get down. – Lake Mohave

The fact that Lake Conroe lacks vast amounts of aquatic vegetation requires us to extensively use our electronics to find fish. Fish live on structure, therefore, we fish structure whether it be dropoffs, creek channels, roadbeds, pond dams, humps, rocks, or standing timber; these are the areas that you will find concentrations of fish.

Taking into consideration that most of these structures are underwater and are not visible from the surface means that to locate them and fish them effectively a graph is a necessity. The graph is a very crucial tool when fishing Lake Conroe. This is the only “window” that you have to figure out what is going on underwater.

Understanding how the graph works and what you are looking at when you view the screen is one of the most important attributes to using the graph to your advantage. The unit(graph) has a transducer that is mounted somewhere in the hull or off of the transom. The transducer is what sends out a beam and receives back the information that is relayed to the unit. The beam is the shape of a cone and anything that comes into the cone appears on the screen of the graph. To get a better understanding of this completely forget about water for a minute. Picture yourself standing in a field at night, it is pitch dark. Now picture a helicopter hovering at twenty feet above the ground just out in front of you. The helicopter has a Q-Beam pointed at the ground and the only thing that you can see is what comes into the beam of the light. This is exactly like what happens on the water when you graph the bottom. Your boat is like the helicopter and the transducer shooting beam from the boat is similar to the beam of the Q-Beam from the helicopter.
Also the information is put on the screen as if you were looking at from the side. What goes on the screen of the graph is a profile of the cone(beam).

To get the most accurate reading when locating fish program the unit in the manual mode. This will dis-enable the unit to put the little fish symbols in where the unit “thinks” that there is a fish. Fish will show up as inverted V’s. The longer the taper from the inverted V the bigger the fish. Also the size of the inverted V is an indication of the size of the fish. Bait fish in large school will show up as a cloud or ball on the screen. Individual or small schools of bait will show up as specks or small dark areas on the screen.
Finding underwater structure is the key to catching fish on Lake Conroe and a good understanding of the graph will make you more successful. For more information or a guide trip booking call me at (281) 380 8222. Good luck fishing.

Bill Cannan – Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

Last month on the first competition day of the Texas Invitational I encountered some rough water that I believed only existed in the Gulf of Mexico. Sure I have been on Toledo, Livingston, Conroe, Rayburn, and Richland Chambers when they have gotten profoundly rough due to high winds. But this first day of the tournament at Rayburn was a bit beyond that. When we left out early that morning the wind was blowing about fifteen to twenty miles per hour, rough but manageable. Six hours later the wind speed had doubled and we now had five to eight footers rolling from the south end of the lake.

Well my partner and I were up the lake some twenty miles and had to drive south right into the wind to get back to Twin Dikes Marina. The waves in the middle of the lake were monsters ready to swallow any bassfisherman and his bass boat whole, so the middle of the lake is no place to be when the wind is blowing that hard.

When the wind blows up or down a lake, the main lake channels the wind up the middle and so running one bank or the other is usually going to be the safest, most protected place to be. Running behind any point that extends out into the lake and breaks the wave action will work for some of your run back. When you run out of protected water you just have to power through the big stuff taking it nice and easy, one wave at a time. Tacking back and forth will keep you cutting the waves at angles and allows you less of a chance of spearing or submarining into a wave.

Picking one side of the lake or the other can be tricky when the wind blows like it did that first tournament day. Once that day, I came around one of the mainlake points where the waves were so big that I could not make much progress. Three miles across the lake I knew of a point that extended out into the lake and I knew if I could get across the lake that I could run behind that point for a couple of miles. So I turned the boat across the wind and headed across the lake. This move would not pay off until I reached the other shoreline but then I could turn downlake and continue towards weigh in.

Playing the wind is tricky because the wind can curl around the points and into coves, but utilizing the mainlake points is one tip to remember when running big water on our massive lakes. Keeping your cool and being patient also increases your chances of conquering big water. Although I must admit that in that big water the first day it was as if I could not hear anything at all and fear was creeping in. I could not hear the wind or the water I could only feel the aloneness that Mother Natures fury forces on you when shes almost got you, it is the loneliest feeling in the world.

Hopefully you will not ever be caught in this type of situation, but if you ever do utilize some of these tips and I promise they will help you to survive the storm.

Bill Cannan
Professional Guide and Tournament Angler – Lake Mohave

I recently was talking to Pat McCarty (the editor of this magazine) about some of the emails we receive concerning fishing. We both get a good bit of email from people who are beginners or have never fished and they want to know where to fish, how to fish, and so on.

Normally in my column I am discussing topics that will broaden the horizons of a very experienced angler and its usually cutting edge information that I have learned and in the process of developing further. In fact most professional fishermen that write articles are writing them on high tech topics.
Well if you are an experienced fishermen this article may not be for you but it is your duty to the sport you love to give it to someone who is a beginner or to a youngster so that they can use this article to learn more ways to fish and more places to fish.

If you are a beginner fisherperson or a youngster and are looking to learn more about fishing you have everything in your favor. There are a great many opportunities for you. There are numerous magazines about fishing, TV fishing shows, articles in the newspapers, internet fishing sites, internet fishing chat rooms, internet fishing reports and local guides a phone call away.

One of the biggest questions for a beginner is where do I go to fish?

There are many answers to this question: Farm ponds, golf course ponds, creeks, and reservoirs. You may not have a boat so the first three are going to apply to you more than the reservoirs will.

Farm ponds and golf course ponds. Maybe you don’t know someone with a farm pond or someone who can give you permission to fish a golf course pond. You have to ask permission. The worst they can do is tell you no and more than likely they will grant you permission. If they grant you permission make sure not to leave area clean and you will probably be able and come back again.

Ponds and creeks usually have bass, bream, and catfish. Some of them even have strong populations of crappie(white perch).

If you are going to fish for bass, fish with small baits. There are usually more small bass than big bass no matter where you go and if you are a beginner you want to catch as many fish as you can to gain the most experience from each outing. Small baits catch small bass but the chance to catch big bass is always there no matter what you are throwing. When I say small bass I mean fish less than 2 pounds, when I say small baits I mean small spinnerbaits like beatlespins 1/8 and 1/4oz sizes, Stanley Baby Wedge spinnerbaits, small plastic worms(4 inch), and small crankbaits 1/4oz sizes. Bass live around cover: stumps, logs, aquatic vegetation, bushes, or any object in the water. Cast your baits to these types of cover for bass.
The easiest way to catch bream or perch is to use a small long shanked bream hook, put a small spiltshot two inches above the hook(about 1/16oz) and a small cork about a foot and half up. Bait the hook with a cricket, grasshopper, pinch of earthworm, piece of shrimp, or small doughballs. Always make sure the hook points is covered, you will get more bites if you do. Cast the cork and bait out and let it sit. If there is a stump or log in the water cast nearby.

Catfish are bottom feeders. They can be caught in just about any body of freshwater. Rig up a hook and about a ¼ ounce weight and bait the hook with prepared dough bait, chicken liver, shrimp, an earthworm, a junebug, or a minnow and cast it out and let it sit on the bottom. If you let it sit there long enough a catfish will smell it and come bite it.

Your local sporting goods store clerk can help you with selecting some of the baits mentioned and can also give you tips on fishing them. They are there to help you and are usually fishermen themselves.
If you have already experienced pond and creek fishing and you want to move on, you may want to join a bass club. You don’t even have to own a boat to be in a bass club. One or two weekends a month the club meets at a lake, the club members with boats bring their boats and the non-boaters fish with them. Joining a bass club is one of the quickest ways to learn about bass fishing, you usually fish with different fishermen and you will see many different techniques and approaches to the water. Always share the expense of the fuel with the boat-owner and maybe a little extra for oil and you will be a welcomed partner anytime.
These are some very inexpensive ways that you can enjoy the sport of fishing. Now is a perfect time of year to get out and fish. Good luck fishing.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

For the last few weeks I have been gearing up for the upcoming 97-98 BassMaster season. Fishing fifteen B.A.S.S. events in one season is going to me a new experience for me. So in preparation for this season one of my top priorities is to get my boat perfectly organized. I am pretty well organized now but every now and then you have to go through everything and take a little inventory .

I am no perfectionist on this organization topic and have even been called sloppy and unorganized by my fishing partners at times but in an instant if something tells me to throw a certain lure, whether it is a lure that I haven’t thrown in years or days I know right where it is in my boat and can be fishing that lure in moments.

This all goes back to the “little things” that I refer to. If you constantly strive to do the little things they will eventually all add to up to catching more fish and being more successful as a fisherman.

If you have an intuition to throw a bait and you know the bait will work in this little situation, whatever it might be, then you have to put that intuition into action. If the exact location of that bait that your mind is telling you to throw is unknown and it would take you five minutes to find it, the timing of the intuition is thrown off and it is lost. Your frustration of not knowing where the lure is overpowers the intuition and the feeling is wasted and unfulfilled. You might not even take the time to look for the bait if you don’t know exactly where it is and the same thing happens. You cannot fish instinctively to your maximum potential if you don’t know where all of your baits are.

There are certainly plenty of other reasons to be organized in the boat , however, this is one of my main reasons for being organized, so that I can act upon an instinct in an instant.

I keep most of my crankbaits, topwaters, rogues, hooks,weights, and some plastics in clear plastic boxes. The boxes are labeled: shallow cranks, mid cranks, deep cranks, worms, craws, french fries, soft jerk baits, hula grubs, topwaters, rogues, diving rogues, etc.

The labels are all in plain view and facing up at me when I open my deck lid in my boat. It takes constant maintenance to keep these boxes organized. All of the baits you use in a day have to be put back where they came from at the end of the day to keep up with this system. After a while you will memorize the location in each box where every single lure lies and this will even speed up your lure location when you need one.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

Last month I fished the Alabama BassMaster Eastern Invitational on Lake Guntersville. I had never been to the lake but I knew that it had aquatic vegetation in the form of milfoil and coontail. Driving to Alabama I was putting together some possible seasonal patterns for mid-May. Topwaters, buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, and Carolina rigged french fries all fished around the grass. New feathering, underwater grass points is what I was going to definitely check out.

I started practice on Monday with the rest of the competitors and ran up the Tennessee River which feeds Lake Guntersville. I pulled into a big bay with several major creeks feeding it called Seabold. I had studied it on the map and liked the layout of the bay. I ran to the biggest point in the whole bay and shut down, jumped on the front deck and hurled a buzzbait about forty yards over the top of a shallow grassbed not yet to the surface. The bait was on retrieve when it hit the water and if there was a fish around it would have to bite my bait, everything was perfect- a slight breeze, overcast, and it was real early. I made about six turns on the handle and a three pounder came up and smashed my lure. I boated the fish and saw some shad getting busted while I was releasing the fish. I made a cast across the action and I had another one on.
This went on all morning and by noon I had caught about fifteen bass. I picked up a Zara Spook at noon and began working it over some deeper grass edges. About twenty minutes went by as I worked the bait and finally one came up and crashed it. My topwater pattern was getting stronger and stronger as the day went on.

I fished the buzzbait and Zara Spook exclusively for three days of practice and caught fifteen to twenty-five bass each day and between eight and fourteen fish a day were over the fifteen inch minimum length. Pretty solid pattern right? Wrong!

The weather has never been more stable during any B.A.S.S. event that I have fished. Being that these tournaments are six days long you sometimes have to adjust to major weather changes. The weather was overcast and foggy the first morning of the tournament with the air temp the same it had been all week- mid seventies.

I arrived to my fish early Thursday morning with a high level of confidence in my buzzbait pattern only to not have a bite on it by eleven. I was in shock and realizing that I had not backed up my buzzbait pattern with anything. I had caught fish on the Zara Spook but they did not want it either. The Zara Spook would not qualify as a back up pattern being that it is a topwater bait also.

What had happened is that the surface temperature had warmed up enough through three warm practice days that the fish were going to come off of the strong topwater pattern. It just so happened that they came off of it during the tournament and they came off abruptly. Usually this is a gradually declining bite and the fish don’t usually come off of this pattern overnight.

PREPARATION
To compete in bass tournaments and be successful in every tournament, you must be prepared. Having one primary pattern with no back up plan does not qualify for being prepared. A backup plan is a must in every tournament you fish, never count on one pattern no matter how strong it is. When the fish change to another pattern you have to anticipate that change and be ready to change with the fish to the new pattern. So get yourself a couple of patterns for your next tournament and don’t get yourself sent to “the school of hard knocks” like someone else you know did.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

So many of the “little things” in bass fishing are overlooked by anglers. They still catch bass because they do enough things right to overcome the things they may not do completely right. Over time a bass fisherman develops a confidence in his productive methods and fishes himself into a rut. Gaining a particular confidence in a technique is one of the keys to successful bass fishing but to limit experimentation because of having confidence in one successful method will inhibit your maturity as an elite angler.
An elite angler is a bass fisherman who has mastered all of the seasonal patterns and has a combined knowledge of the scientific and spiritual sides of bass fishing. I am certainly no elite angler, however what I have learned through experience is that the experience itself is the way to becoming an elite angler. Bass fishing is very similar to golf. A guy who can shoot scratch consistently but cannot shoot a 68 or 69 is a great golfer but he is no where near the golfer who can post a 60 or a 61. Here’s what separates the two golfers. The first golfer is a great golfer but has played himself into a rut because he has developed confidence in a style and will not experiment further for fear of losing his game, the second golfer has the added confidence in the success he has achieved through his continuous experimentation. The principle is same with fishing. The fear of not catching fish keeps fishermen from experimenting and enhancing their proven techniques.

Little things are what set elite anglers apart from great bass fishermen. Little things that elite anglers learn through countless hours of trial and error on the water, hours and hours of tournament competition, and fishing through many changing weather conditions are what separate them from great fishermen. After a while all of the little things add up to a specific style and understanding that is unique to that fisherman. His perception of a situation includes all of his senses and his knowledge becomes a series of confident actions.
In the next few months I am going to be targeting some of the “little things” and how to experiment and develop yourself to the next level and towards the goal we all strive for which is becoming an elite angler. Meanwhile be aware of the “little things” that you may do that define you as a fisherman, just being aware is a step in the right direction.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

It’s not the Sports Illustrated magazine of bass fishing that BassMaster is. It’s not the how to or the when and where that is usually portrayed in other bass fishing magazines. It is an in depth look at the heart, mind, and soul of real bass fishing outdoorsmen. From many angles this magazine will breakdown concepts and mind sets of proven mental attitudes and provide an understanding of being and awareness. Articles that give the biological and environmental side of the story as well as the anglers side. Many of the crucial elements to bass fishing and the outdoors that have never been captured in photographs or in writing will be shared in this magazine.

After reading the first issue of Circular Bass Fishing, cover to cover, it has already moved me up a step on my personal fishing ladder. Some of the concepts in the magazine I have experienced and knew existed, however, sometimes a series of experiences still may not reveal an obvious phenomena. But when you read it on paper you can get a better perception of a concept and the next time you enter that particular situation you will be more knowledgeable and closer to “Total Understanding”. This magazine is like nothing that you have ever read. It is the philosophy of fishing, the psychology of a bass fisherman, the bionomics we encounter when on the water, and many other interesting themes in the sphere of bass fishing. The concepts are “high tech”, yet fun to read and written so that they are easy to follow and comprehend.

Rick Clunn has been involved with the magazine from the start and will continue contributing each issue with his “In The Flow with Rick Clunn” column. This is an extraordinary opportunity for all of us to learn from such a master fisherman with unmatched tournament accomplishments. Reading his article in Volume I, he allows you to enter his zone and grasp concepts that have led to his success. According to Circular Bass Fishing, “In The Flow with Rick Clunn” will be informative articles in a building block scenario.

Since July 26, 1995 this magazine has been published on the information superhighway, the Internet. For those who are unfamiliar with the Internet it is a worldwide connection of computer users with thirty million current subscribers. Pat McCarty masterminds the layout of the magazine and is responsible for the magazine’s link to cyberspace. This is the worlds first bass fishing magazine to be published on the Internet and is without a doubt the most modern bass fishing publication. To read the online edition log onto your Internet server and go to URL location http://mcia.com/~circfish. The growth of this new online community is phenomenal and projected to more than double in size within the next year.

The feature in Volume I is written by Circular Bass Fishing’s publisher, Phil Whittemore. The feature is called “Attitude is Everything” and is an important reminder for the state of mind that you should maintain while fishing. First hand accounts of when state of mind was singled out as the sole reason for catching fish and not catching fish. Spirit and character are two topics that will be explored in future issues.

This magazine is about that realm of bass fishing that you may not have even considered; it will help you focus your subconscious activity into the blanketing weapon of your arsenal. If you are striving for achievement in fishing as I am, this is a chance to be a more balanced fisherperson and join the “Leading Edge” of Circular Bass Fishing.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

There are so many levels of awareness that a person can achieve through bass fishing. A weekend angler or even an angler who rarely bass fishes can attain close relationships with bass, nature, and his/her surroundings. A serious bass fisherman or tournament bass fisherman can reach extreme levels of awareness during outings and tournaments. Tournament fishing seems to elevate my awareness to new levels at times to where I come in and out of “the zone”. I am still learning to recognize actually being in “the zone”, when I get into it, when I leave it, and furthermore how to stay in it. Once a person can stay “in the flow” or in “the zone” anything is possible.

There are many definitions and perceptions of the term awareness. For the purpose of this article awareness is your ability to get comfortable enough with your surroundings that your mind takes over and have absolutely zero distractions and fish in “the zone”. Now think about this, fishing without any distractions. I am not talking about fishing fast, fishing hard, thinking hard, or trying hard, because these are all distractions. “In the flow” is a somewhat more advanced stage than “the zone”. To me, being “in the flow” is a deeper bond with the flow of nature that is prevalent in every move that you make, being aware of your surroundings, and feeling that you are a part of the environment when on the water. The feeling of being a total outcast in the environment, because of the fact that you are standing on an unnatural twenty thousand dollar bass boat, does not cross your mind. If your mind becomes “in the flow” then you, your body, your boat, and everything in it become one with nature and you connect to the flow of nature.

My experiences of being in “the zone” are few and usually only last long enough to catch a fish or two. One day in a tournament earlier this year I felt that I was in “the zone” for about two hours which is the longest that I have ever recognizably been “in the flow”. Veterans of mental mastery like Rick Clunn have experienced days in “the zone”. Rick Clunn also refers to this phenomenon as “touching perfection”. In his continuing education course called Angler’s Quest there are many articles that help understand awareness.
Angler’s Quest would be an excellent opportunity for you to study these topics further with articles designed to teach, this article is purely informative.

Being in “the zone” is far beyond catching fish or figuring out a pattern. Using your instincts and listening to your inner voices and reacting to them instead of ignoring them is all part of “the zone” that I am speaking of. Intuition plays a role as feeling. An intuition is not an idea it is a feeling. Intuition would be to do something like make a particular cast to an exact spot with the feeling that there is a giant bass there and then to catch it . Ignoring the conscious distractions and letting these subconscious feelings and intuitions flow through your actions is the goal. Having a “gut” feeling, recognizing it and then utilizing the feeling; this is when the impossible becomes possible.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

Being a very popular lake for fishing and water skiing, Lake Conroe receives quite a bit of pressure throughout the summer. As fishermen, we know that fishing is usually better during the week when there less boat traffic on the lake. The fish are not spooky and nervous like they get when Conroe is overrun with boat traffic.

One way to deal with the weekend boat traffic and still catch fish is to start your trip early. I try to run half-day morning trips as much as possible during the weekend. Starting trips at 6 a.m. has been an ideal time to get started. There is plenty of light and there is hardly any boat traffic Until around 10:30 a.m. Even by then boat traffic is still at a minimum until around noon.

Opinions of Lake Conroe’s black bass fishing vary from angler to angler. The angler that understands a graph and can find underwater structure such as roadbeds, humps, creek channels, and tank dams will tell you that the fishing is great. A newcomer to Conroe without these skills will swear that there is not even one single bass in the lake. Other lakes like Lake Livingston can be fished like a big pond. Working the shoreline structure for black bass is effective ,year around. This time of the year on Conroe, the majority .of black bass are on the deeper structure from 15 to 28 .feet. So late in the summer, working the boat docks, shallow .stumps, and other shoreline structure is not as effective as fishing the deep structure. However, if you happen to be fishing at night under a half moon or more, the shoreline structure is the place to be.

The water starts to cool after the sun goes down. By the wee morning hours the shallows have cooled 3-6 degrees. The shad move into the cooler water and the bass are right behind them. Some of the shallow areas to concentrate on are lighted pier and boat docks. The lights draw the shad and minnows in and bass will hold in the shadows ambushing them.

Black bass have a horizontal line down their body that represents a system I call “The Force”. They can detect movement underwater so whether there is light or not they can find bait. For example, a black bass could find a black worm on a moonless night probably as easy as it could in the daytime. It is like a sixth sense that these fish possess which we can use to our advantage. Baits that give off vibration that is attractive to bass are the ones to throw. Texas rigged worms have always been a popular night time bait. Surface baits are also very effective during the night. A black Jitterbug is a classic, and has been taking bass at night for a couple of decades. Pop R’s and Zara Spooks are two other baits that will attract strikes.

August is one of the better months for this type of fishing. Most of the marinas around the lake are right near prime areas. In many cases you won’t even have to crank the big motor. Good luck fishing.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide – Lake Mohave

December 19th, 1995 I was standing in line at Houston Intercontinental Airport waiting to board a flight to London, England. From there I would catch another flight to Lagos, Nigeria in Africa. I was anxious get this trip underway so that I could visit my parents who live in Lagos and also experience some of the offshore fishing that my dad had been telling me about.

My luggage was checked in and the only thing left was a ten hour flight to London, a six hour layover there, and finally a seven hour flight across the Sahara Desert to Lagos located on the Ivory Coast. Speaking of luggage, I had two suit cases full of items that my parents have a hard time getting. Everything from Velveeta cheese to stick spray-n-wash to flour and corn tortillas. Also, I hand carried a couple boxes of offshore fishing tackle that my dad had requested. This was a special delivery that I planned to guard with my life because tackle is hard to come by there also.

Well twenty six long hours later I was standing in the living room of their high rise flat. Their flat was about a mile from the coast and I could easily see the Gulf of Guinea/ Atlantic Ocean from the balcony. Looking out I also took in the surrounding homes, people, and their culture. Certainly looking around quickly gave me a new look on life.
I visited with my parents and sisters a while and then was knocked out by jet lag. It has been three years since I have traveled this far and I had long since forgotten my routine when flying these great distances that would keep me from having jet lag so bad once off the plane. My parents used to live in Sumatra, Indonesia which was actually a ways further than Lagos. Nevertheless, this was my first time to Lagos and it felt like my first time on a long trip and I slept way into the next day.

A
couple of days later I had finally gotten adjusted to the time change and was ready to fish. My dad and I fished or hunted together every weekend when I was growing up. The only thing that kept us from making a trip on the weekend was one of my little league games. However, with his overseas assignments and me growing up we have not had the opportunities that we once had to spend time together outdoors. So nowadays any trip we make is special and we were both looking forward to a few days of offshore fishing.
We left early on the 27th to go down to the boat. Lucky, the Nigerian captain, was waiting for us with the twin 250 horsepower Yamahas warming up on the back of a 28 foot Boston Whaler CC. My dad had told me the boat was awesome and was he ever right. Edwin, the security guard, also accompanied us and helped us get our gear on board.

We left out of Lagos at about 7:30 am and headed for a GPS coordinate where they had previously caught some barracuda, wahoo, dorado, and an occasional marlin. Off of the Ivory Coast there is a shelf that they call the drop. The water from the mainland gradually drops for about twenty miles to six hundred feet deep then drops according to a topography map to seven to nine thousand feet. On this break or drop is where big marlin and sailfish roam and various other fish congregate on the trashline which is usually, under normal conditions, in the same vicinity. The GPS coordinate we had were a certain draw in the drop called the Hole.

We headed out of the harbor, down the ship channel, and through the jetties. The place was similar to Freeport in a way if you have ever gone offsore from there. As soon as we had gotten passed the jetties Dad and I started rigging rods and setting up, we had about an hour before we arrived. The seas were calm, three to four foot rollers maybe twenty five to thirty yards apart.

As we neared the drop we came upon the trash line first. Lucky slowed and paralleled the trashline as Dad and I let out the baits to troll. Way out back we had a bait called a Bird that trailed a big marlin plug. Also at about the same distance we had two other big blunt headed marlin baits. The marlin baits were trolled on heavy tuna sticks with Penn 50’s spooled with eighty pound test. Closer to the boat we had three one ounce feather jigs trolled on seven foot spinning rods spooled with twenty five pound test.
It wasn’t long before we Dad and I had a double hook up on two of the spinning rods.

We both had our hands full for three or four minutes until we got each of our fish to the boat. We had double on blue fin tuna that weighed six or seven pounds each and really put up a powerful fight. Lucky got us back up to trolling speed and we went back at it eagerly awaiting another hookup. It was not long and I had a hookup on my spinning rod, this fish was stronger than the tuna and it ran out about fifty yards of line before I could ever turn it. The water was sky blue and when the fish neared the boat we could see it probably thirty or forty feet deep. It looked like a barracuda or kingfish but when I finally got it close enough we could easily tell that it was about a twelve to fifteen pound wahoo.
We fished the trashline and drop area until around noon catching tuna, wahoo, and dorado. Lucky, with his eagle eyes spotted a ship that was anchored just on the horizon and suggested that we go and troll by it. Dad and I reeled in the baits and Lucky hammered down toward the ship barely visible in the horizon. About fifteen minutes later we approached the ship and let the baits out to troll by it. It was a tanker from South America waiting to head into the harbor and unload. We trolled right by the ship and one of the big rods had a strike and the drag screamed as line was stripping from the reel. I moved toward the rod fastening my fighting belt and hooked the clips to the reel and positioned the rod in the holster on my belt. Lucky had turned the boat to my side as the fish had run way out on the port side. Dad reeled in all of the other rods and I went to work. The fish did not take much more line after the initial run on the strike but was easily holding his ground somewhere about a hundred yards away. I pumped the rod and reeled over and over until my arms were burning. About ten minutes later we could see a silvery looking fish below the boat. I worked the fish up to the boat and Dad and Lucky gaffed the fish and boated it. It was a thirty pound barracuda. I was exhausted from the quick battle and wondered how I would fare if I ever hooked a marlin that might fight for a couple of hours.

We made several more passes by the ship and caught some tuna and Dad caught a big dorado that weighed about twenty five pounds or so. We fished until four pm and headed back for Lagos. In the coolers we had tuna, wahoo, dorado, and the barracuda. We had an action packed day of offshore fishing that was the first of several days that we would be able to fish while I was there. Lucky proved to be a savvy offshore captain and I am sure my Dad will continue to rely on his knowledge of the waters there.

On another day we were out we actually had a marlin hookup. Lucky estimated the fish to be around two hundred and fifty pounds. The fish hit and got airborne and then ripped line for about forty five seconds and then just came off, but that’s just fishing.

Overall I had a very enjoyable trip and hope to go back this summer or sometime next Fall. It is always interesting to visit another country and see how the people live and what they do each day. Going some place far off and having the opportunity to fish with my dad for some kind of fish is always a real adventure.

Bill Cannan Professional Fishing Guide
– Lake Mohave