[PECo]

After my second full day on West Hill Pond, I have to concede a point Bluegill Terminator made in my last post about it. Pete, you are right when you said that West Hill Pond is not a very good largemouth bass lake. But that doesn't mean it's not a terrific lake. It's just a terrific lake for trout and kokanee salmon.

With a forecast for only very light winds, I decided to finish checking out the pond. I saw the sights and fished from 9 AM to 4 PM. I went counter-clockwise around the shore from the boat ramp on the north end. After 15 minutes of slowly paddling down the shore and fishing, I realized that I was probably not going to catch a largemouth bass on the western shore of the pond.

A crystal clear pond with almost no typical largemouth bass cover has nowhere to hold bass, especially on a calm sunny day. Really. And because the western shore of the pond is less residential than the eastern shore, there's also less structure. I could see the bottom almost the entire time I was there and didn't see any largemouth bass, other than juveniles that swam alongside the sunnies singing kumbaya.

I began to tick off time in terms of how many rock bass I caught. I didn't catch another kind of fish until 8 o'rock (i.e., 10:30 AM), when I landed a smallmouth bass. It was dirty. It was little. It even tried to swallow the hook. But unlike the others I've caught, at least it put up a fight. It actually caught air on the way to the kayak.

The next break in the monotony, ahem, tour came at 10 o'rock, when I caught, HOORAY!, a largemouth bass. I think it was the only largemouth bass over 12 inches within 30 feet of the entire western shore. It was hiding underneath a swimming platform and was 16 inches, 1 lb 5 oz. And on my next cast, I caught another dirty little smallie. But this one went limp after it swallowed the hook like a typical dirty little smallie.

At that point, now that I had one largemouth bass in the kayak, I considered cutting off my tour of the western shore and heading to the eastern shore to actually fish. But I pressed on. At 14 o'rock, I spotted a tiny patch of lilies in a cove next to the Boy Scout camp. Although it was shallow and didn't look like it could hold any largemouth bass of any size, I threw my wacky worm at it and caught an 11 inch largemouth bass. I saw another little largemouth bass nearby and realized that I had probably caught the larger of a spawning pair.

At that point, I said, enough is enough, and headed over to the eastern shore to just fish. At 16 o'rock, I caught a 14 inch, 15 oz largemouth bass and it was on. After a couple of terrific hits but no good hooksets, I headed over to the submerged island. Now, I don't know about you, but when a local tells me that the submerged island is where all the big largemouth bass are, I wonder whether he's feeding me a line. Well, this time he was telling the truth. I caught a 15 inch, 1 lb 4 oz largemouth bass and a 16 inch, 1 lb 8 oz largemouth bass off of the two buoys that mark the island. Go figure.

All told, I caught 25 rock bass, 3 smallmouth bass and 9 largemouth bass. I had several good largemouth bass bites that didn't hook up and saw a spawning pair swim past as I did surgery on a rock bass to remove a swallowed hook. The larger of the pair looked to me to be at least 18 inches and 3 lbs, but I never got a shot at it because of the damned rock bass. Here are all of the largemouth bass that I caught:

16 inches, 1 lb 5 oz
11 inches
14 inches, 15 oz
15 inches, 1 lb 4 oz
16 inches, 1 lb 8 oz
15 inches, 1 lb 3 oz
12 inches
13 inches
12 inches

I got off the pond at 25 o'rock. I think I'm done fishing West Hill Pond for largemouth bass. I still need to find a more respectable personal best and don't think it's in there. Don't let your head get too big, Pete!
_________________
Don't forget to wear sunscreen and don't litter!

[Bluegill Terminator]

PECo I told you... I would never lie.