I was at Lake Powell to catch bass, preferably largemouth. My teacher at the time was a bass pro.
Consider air pressure, barometric pressure, full-moon/no-moon, habitat, presentation, retrieve, depth, structure and, most of all, choice of lures when going for bass, I was told. And, he continued, bass are particular about what they eat, and what they liked yesterday they may not like today, and today's lure may not be tomorrow's best choice.
There must be a thousand different bass lures on the market, and to pick the right one takes experience more than luck.
"And be quick," he said, because a bass will hit and be gone in a split second when it tastes plastic instead of fish fillet.
For these reasons, I've always put bass at the top of the higher-learning charts.
Carp, now, I was never fond of.
A big chunk of bread dough is all it takes to catch carp. That or a sharp arrow when hunting carp in the shallow marshes.
Then I got in a discussion with a couple from England who'd won a trip to Lake Powell to fish for striped bass. I mentioned that my choice of fish was bass. They, in turn, said fishing for stripers was fun but much preferred standing on the docks at Bullfrog and fishing for carp.
Carp. Here in Utah, I told them, given a choice, true fishermen would sooner catch a cold than a carp. We consider them trash fish. Bottom feeders. Undesirables. They have no value, no redeemable qualities and good for nothing more than fertilizer. They're the vagrants of the fish world.
Carp in America are shot, poisoned and tossed on the banks to rot. And, if caught by accident, it's considered far better to cut the line and give up the hook than to, ugh, touch the scaly fish.
An accompanying writer told me if he wrote that in his British magazine, he'd be hurried off to the gallows. He wrote a story once, he told me, about how 13th century monks ate carp and was inundated with hate mail.
Avid anglers in England spend thousands of dollars and all of their vacation time just for a chance at hooking big carp, only to take a picture and then release it.
One carp was so loved, he told me, because it had been caught so many times and given so many anglers lasting memories, the fish was placed in a special tank to be cared for and never caught again.
He told me that carp are considered among the more educated fish. He explained that carp will "mouth" bait before they bite and can feel even the thinnest of monofilament line. So the trick is to tie one end of a human hair to the bait and the other to the hook. The fish can't feel the diameter of a hair, so once it's sure the bait is safe, it opens up and bites. So sensitive is its mouth, he continued, it can measure bait, and if it doesn't feel right, it opens up and swims off. So fishermen fish with commercial carp food so each pellet is precisely the same size.
That all may be true, but give me a bass any day and leave the carp for the viewing enjoyment of people on the docks at Lake Powell and to young fishermen who aren't that particular, yet, about the fish they hook.
E-mail: grass@desnews.com