Little Yeller Bass

I was bream fishing around a couple of trees out from the shoreline the other day when my bait had barely hit the water when the cork disappeared. I set into what felt like a pretty good little bream, but it was not. It was a small, yeller (yellow for you folks with spell checker) bass.

Yeller bass. The two words make one of my good fishing buddies cringe with angst (that’s spelled correctly, but the way). He hates yeller bass.  So he won’t be pleased with the rest of this story.

I sat in that one spot and caught at least a dozen back to back to back. All about three inches long. Yes, I’m sure it wasn’t the same one because I…well, I refuse to say what I did with them because I don’t want the baby fish wing of PETA on my case, but I will say, turtles gotta eat, too.

I finally left, but could have probably caught no telling how many. What’s that mean? It means there must have been some kind of big spawn on those critters this year. And while I do think it’s funny to tease my unnamed fishing buddy, it does have a serious side, too.  Too many of those things can ruin a good crappie lake. They like the same habitat. They like the same food. They like the same spawning areas. Well, you get the picture.

One thing about the little critters. Their gill plates are as sharp as a razor blade, so be careful removing them from your hook. The bigger ones are fun to catch and I’ve even cleaned and fried a few filets off them.

They aren’t bad, but neither is a hot dog sometimes. My buddy probably won’t eat hot dogs either.