In the Outdoors
Shake and Rattle for Rolls: Best tune of the summer
With Oak Duke

The water in the weedchoked pond was warm to the touch. Felt like bath water.

And the heavy heat of the almost motionless air kept even the biting flies holed up in the mid-afternoon shade.

My medium-sized black buzz bait was making its characteristic V-shaped wake, all the time churning up the water like an oldfashioned egg beater - when it suddenly disappeared in a swirl and roll of a heavy bigmouth that couldn't resist the temptation to bash the noisy contraption.

Buzz baits may seem too large, but they will pick up fish no longer than their wire-frame span.

Sometimes bass seem to hit the bait "on the fall" or just after the cast - appearing instantly at the sound of the heavy lure smacking the surface.

Other times they wait for the late stages of the retrieve. And still other times they prefer to only wait for it to begin churning up the water. Then they crush it.

My younger son had told me years ago that the biggest bass which he had ever landed was caught in the Genesee River and taken on a large, monstrosity of a contraption called a white buzz bait.

It became known to us as "the white buzz bait."

He had found it in the corner of the tackle box. It had always been there and picked over for more traditional white spinnerbaits with their classic Colorado blade or smaller buzz baits, more apropos for smaller water and smaller bass - instead of that big water chopper of a white buzz bait.

I never did actually see that storied fish. (He had released it.) But he made a real believer of me one day when, after I had just worked a deep run with a diminutive chartreuse spinnerbait, he had come right behind and hauled out a heavy three-pound smallmouth with the old buzz bait.

But by that time, the white rubber tendril skirting on the killer lure had been blasted and chewed off its wire frame long ago by ornery smallies and aggressive largemouths.

It still hangs in the tackle box in semi-forced retirement, replaced by newer, though similar prototypes in search of their own histories.

Having enjoyed fishing for selective trout with diminutive dry flies, makes the transfer to fishing with huge, disruptive, splashing plugs and wire baits exotic and certainly a contrast. But they are the same in one way. The angler visually enjoys the moment of the strike - that is watching the fish strike the lure.

Certainly all would agree one of the supreme angling pleasures.

Buzz baits are not the lone noisemaker on the water in the summer hurled and heaved by bass fishermen.

Jitterbugs of many shapes, sizes, designs, and colors have fooled millions and millions of bass for decades.

A supreme sport is night fishing for bass when "the feed is on."

The characteristic "wobblewobble wobble" cadence and sound of a jitterbug and its disturbing wake over a bass lair has proven it's a powerful strike-response-stimulator in the early morning hours or just at dusk too.

The jitterbug's "sound chamber" is a curved metal plate on the nose of the plug. It creates the bubbly sound and if it becomes bent and "out of tune" then the lure becomes less effective.

Other popular "up top" noisemakers that stir up the waters are the prop-plugs such as Woodchoppers and Torpedos. There are a lot of variations on the theme, some even have propellers on each end. And bass have been churned up by them all.

The famed Hula popper seems at times to be the hottest topwater on the surface film, along with Pop-R's and others of similar design. Their "cher-chug" sound and characteristic "spit" evidently drives the fish crazy too at times.

Bass fishermen, as in all the angling disciplines, find it necessary to buy a lot of different lures.

And topwater plugs may seem a bit excessive and expensive, and old-fashioned - that is until a tanker of a big-mouth or tiger-striped smallie explodes under one full-bore, and shakes itself almost completely out of the water, making the drag on the reel sing the best tune of the summer.

(Oak Duke, publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter and Spectator writes a weekly column, appearing on The Outdoors Page. He is the author on two books on hunting turkey and deer. To contact him, publisher@wellsvilledaily.com)