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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - July 15, 2000 In the minds of a tiny cadre of fishermen in northeastern Kansas, the best fishing of the summer doesn't arrive until the heat index surpasses the 100-degree mark. And the best days are the ones that are so hot and breezeless that the jet skiers, recreational boaters and other half-hearted souls are kept at bay. Not only do these anglers possess the wherewithal to endure the heat of the midsummer sun, but they also know something that a lot of others don't know about fishing. According to these ardent and savvy anglers, there are scads of erroneous theories about the way fish behave during the mercilessly hot and muggy days of summer. For instance, most people suspect that hot weather turns the fish sullen or lethargic, making them difficult to catch. Fish behavior, however, often defies the observational and deductive powers of most humans. That is why sage anglers say that the behavior of fish is frequently counter-intuitive. Across the years, the true-blue midsummer anglers who plied Pomona Lake for channel catfish, wipers and white bass discovered that the higher the heat index rose the better the fishing often became. In fact, the fishing can be so good that a few anglers make a game of catching and releasing more fish and than the total degrees of the heat index. So, if the heat index reaches a 109 degrees, these anglers try to catch 110 fish, and there have been occasional outings when they have doubled the index by catching and releasing 218 fish. But for several summers, Pomona's fishing has been sour. One reason for that is thousands of white bass died in June of 1999 from a bacterial infection. Another reason is all the heavy rains since the summer of 1993 turned Pomona into a turbid and alga-laden waterway. This summer, however, Pomona is clear. What's more, the fishing is better than it has been for a long time, and when the weather bureau issued a heat-advisory warning on July 11, the fishing turned white-hot. This day dawned warm and humid, and the wind that had blown hard from the south for two days finally died. At 5 a.m. area thermometers registered 83 degrees. Throughout the day, the sun burned as fiercely as a butane flame, and even when a thick layer of clouds covered it for an hour or two, the heat never abated. By midday the heat index registered 111 degrees, not a breeze riffled the lake's surface, and by 3 p.m. the water's surface temperature hit 91.4 degrees. Across that hot and glassy surface, scores of small wipers and pint-sized white bass periodically attacked schools of gizzard shad; some of those blitzkriegs lasted four minutes, and that was a sign that the fish weren't slothful. However, it was so beastly hot that only three boats of anglers could bear to ply Pomona's 4,000 acres. The Schmidtlein clan of Topeka operated two of the boats. From daylight till noon, the Schmidtleins fished a submerged main-lake hump for channel catfish in 16 feet of water, using David Schmidtlein's homemade stink bait, and they almost doubled the heat index by catching and releasing 202 cats. One brute released by Louise Schmidtlein weighed nearly 11 pounds, and David released another that weight 13.10 pounds. Terry Bivins of Lebo manned the other boat. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., he worked several main-lake humps by slowly hopping a 1/4-ounce marabou jig on the bottom in 13 to 17 feet of water. By day's end Bivins was drenched with sweat, but he easily surpassed the heat index by catching 115 wipers, crappie, white bass and channel cats. |
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