DELAWARE, Ohio — Beautiful autumn leaves have parachuted to earth as rake bait, deer are heavily involved in trying to find a mate, and turkeys are about to find out their true purpose in life. That combination of events adds up to Thanksgiving and all the activities associated with this annual holiday. The feast, football games, shopping, and a week of leftovers are the highlights of mid to late November. And of course, there’s the bass fishing.
While many anglers have hung up their tackle by this time, my friend Rich Carter has been in a fishing frenzy at Alum Creek Lake that lies north of his home in Columbus. When his invitation arrived via a text message, I immediately fired a phone call in his direction.
“Rich, you’re fishing instead of watching the 24-hour media coverage surrounding Harbaugh?”
“You mean you’re watching a bunch of talking heads who get haircuts every day and wear make-up instead of fishing?” came his chuckling challenge.
His comment found me guilty of couch potato-ness and sent me time traveling back to a bus station barber shop in my hometown. The barber of my youth made tetanus shots seem like fun as I remembered one particular session in The Chair. Sam the Barber Man and the other guys waiting their turn were discussing the pathetic state of America’s youth, a topic that seems to have no shelf life limits.
“When I was 18, I had a pack on my back, a rifle in my hand, and I hit Omaha Beach.” Just as Sam completed that declaration, a lawn mower disguised as his clippers roared from my forehead to the back of my neck. To this day, any mention of the Normandy D-Day invasion flings me into a flashback of my “highway haircut.”
Rich and I settled on a plan for me to meet him at Alum Creek Lake’s Cheshire Ramp on a Thursday morning. It was a crisp 34 degrees when I pulled into the parking lot at 7 a.m. with no sign of Rich or his Ranger boat anywhere in sight. As I was putting on more layers than the scouting story surrounding Michigan football, my fishing buddy arrived.
A few minutes later as we raced across the lake at 65 miles per hour, I recalled how warm 34 degrees felt as a wind chill beyond anything Jym Ganahl has ever reported knifed through me. My eyeballs had reached the Sahara stage of dryness before Rich throttled down his 250 horsepower Evinrude. My friend is in his first year of retirement from the Ohio Division of Wildlife (DOW) and he is desperately trying to recapture the fun steady employment robs from all of us.“You have a Jack Hammer tied on?” Rich was not referring to a concrete buster, but a bait from the Z Man company that is one of several chatterbait style lures they offer. We adorned the Jack Hammers with a Z Man soft plastic trailer called a Razor Shadz.
With the ‘hammers ready to pound some bass, we started casting toward the weedlines where Rich has been catching quality bass for three weeks. Two hours on the water had produced no bites before Rich slammed a hookset into the first bass of the morning. The 14-inch largemouth gave a good account of himself before surrendering to the net. He caught two more bass, including a three pounder, before I recorded my first bass of the day.
Despite the late season angling adventure, the bass hit our chatterbaits with authority throughout the day. Most of the time I prefer to use slow moving bottom bouncing baits like a jig and pig, Ned rig, or shakey head worm, but Alum’s bass were not ordering from my usual menu offerings. We tried an array of fast moving baits from spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, jerkbaits, to crankbaits, but all 14 bass we landed that day were caught on the two chatterbaits we threw.
Rich landed nine bass while I caught five. All the fish were ‘keeper’ largemouth bass over the 12 inch size limit. The bass sported bellies that looked like Thanksgiving had come early to Alum. One of the bass I caught had not quite swallowed a meal just before he hammered my lure.
“Rich, check out this tail,” I told the former ‘fish chief’ at the DOW. Rich identified the tail as belonging to a former gizzard shad that was currently a meal for my bass.
“Is this fun or what?!?” laughed Rich as he landed the last bass of the day as the sun was barely peeking over the western hillside across the lake.
“It’s definitely more fun than dodging the neighborhood possum I had to miss on the way over here,” I replied. I don’t know what the opossums are eating in Bearfield Township, but they look like kitchen garbage cans with a tail as they waddle across Route 37.
We finished the day at the Cheshire Tavern that’s one intersection south of the boat ramp. Rich was pumped because it was Pizza Buffet Night at the Tavern. The salad bar had plenty of goodies so we both filled one plate with veggies and another with pizza slices.
In his ongoing pursuit of overdue fun thanks to gainful employment, Rich was camping overnight at Alum Creek. I passed on his invitation due to owning a home armed with a big screen TV, refrigerator, and a real bed. Rich has added a cap to his Tundra and decorated the covered space with a cot and a space heater.
“It’s really comfortable in there,” claimed my delusional friend.
“Rich, you’re bordering on becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member.”
“Whaddya mean?” asked the man about to become Truck Boy.
“You’re living in a van down by the river!” I said in my best Chris Farley motivational speech imitation.
“It’s a truck at the lake,” came the Rich retort.
“Exactly.”
Once winter overcomes Ohio, that 34-degree rendezvous at Alum Creek Lake will seem warm, especially with the 65-degree afternoon that made an appearance and the boat full of bass Rich and I caught.
However, I draw the line when it comes to pickup truck camping no matter how good the bass are biting in November.