The Mendenhall Family: Buggin Bass

My trip to Benewah Lake

On Tuesday May 19th, Alison and I explored one of the southern most lakes in the CD'A chain lake system. If you want to see where the pictures are taken on google maps visit my Picasa album here, the google maps is in the left column, and I have flagged the physical location for each picture. The picture above was taken at the end of the day and is the dock at the boat launch. Only one other person had shown up to fish, and she sat on this dock and caught nothing (using a worm thrower pole). I thought that maybe some big bass or pike were hiding in here, so I took a few minutes to try to catch them. Directly behind me was a big rain storm coming so I didn't spend much time here (it was well after 6 PM and I wanted to pack before getting hit with the rain.

This picture is of the lake facing east from the boat launch dock, which is the direction I traveled in the canoe to get to my bay. I was here to catch some pike, which I did not do. However this bay (pictured next) held a bunch of very large bass. Given wind conditions on the lake, this was the only accessible place by canoe so I was stuck (unless I was willing to pack up the equipment and move to another lake). I have no pictures of the fish I caught that day, because Alison had my camera and was playing around. But let me tell you, I caught the largest bass I have ever seen. It was a large mouth, and I could fit my whole fist into its mouth. It's over all length was 35 inches, and its girth was larger than both my hands wrapped around it. It had to be pushing the 6-7 pound range. I also caught several small mouth bass in the 4 to 5 pound range, and at least two more get off the hook (and another that followed my fly all the way too the dock).

It is spring, so the lakes here are very flooded. I could walk 400 yards in any direction from here, and the water depth still would not get above about 4 feet. After I caught my really big bass, I wondered back to were Alison was and she discovered this really cool Dragonfly that must have just "hatched". Alison was very intrigued with this, especially since it was on my butt.

Now I did not see any more dragonflies "hatching" that day, but the wind was very strong all day. The only way to remove him from me was to use my net, no manner of handling with fingers got him to budge. This dragonfly still needed some more time before taking off. (the next picture is one taken right before he did). However, I noticed the osprey circling the lake all day long, but not one every came down for a fish so I wonder if the hatch wasn't bigger than I knew and that the osprey were feeding on these big dragonflies getting sucked up into the wind, but boy was this one big! Sorry there is no pictures of fish.