Largemouth

I had wanted to do some woodchuck hunting last Saturday, but the grass is too high, and none of the farms I regularly shoot have done any serious mowing.So, after catching up on the yardwork, I grabbed my fly rod and a boxful of rubber spiders and camped out on a favorite farm pond for some late afternoon fun.Carroll County and the surrounding area has thousands of farm ponds that are begging to be fished. Permission is seldom any harder to obtain than by politely asking the landowner and offering to share your catch.

On my first cast of the day, I scored a bulls-eye on a submerged stump. Bass pro Bob Parker attempted to conceal his amusement while nudging his boat toward the Mattawoman Creek shoreline so that we could free my lure. It was the first of a series of mishaps and the beginning of a great largemouth bass safari.If I had to limit all my bass fishing to a single spot, the choice would be this section of the lower Potomac River. Most bass fans finger this area as the East Coast's finest largemouth waters.

The complete largemouth bass fisherman should have many skills, from a strong knowledge of lure presentation and habitat recognition to a solid basis in boat handling, navigation and the use of marine electronics.Tonight through Sunday afternoon, Bass Expo '96 at the state fairgrounds in Timonium provides a series of seminars that can help fishermen hone those skills.For several years, Bob Dobart, show organizer and a successful local and regional tournament fisherman, has put together impressive seminar schedules for the Expo.

Bobby Smith's call came at just the right time. "Let's go do some bassin' down on Mattawoman Creek tomorrow," he suggested.I had been on vacation all week and frankly had approached my congenial limits on undersized striped bass and doves that failed to materialize in fields that should have been loaded with them. Some largemouth bassing on the tidal Potomac seemed like the perfect cure to an otherwise frustrating week.Famed Potomac bass guide Ken Penrod once told me, "Mattawoman Creek contains the best ratio of largemouth bass age-to-size than any other tidal water in the state," and despite the tremendous amounts of fishing pressure it faces, that statement holds true.

Thomas Geist turned off the secondary road, shifted his well-used pickup truck into four-wheel drive and drove slowly into the low hills and shallow swales of Queen Anne's County. From the jump seat of the cab, Jo, Geist's golden Labrador, rose and nosed toward the window.A dozen geese lifted from a small pond, circled inside the tree line and set down on another. Mallards moved from the shoreline toward the safety of open water, where bass, bluegill and stripers dimpled the surface.Geist stopped the truck, shifted a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and smiled.

Maryland's stocking of largemouth bass in tidal waters this year was directed toward upper bay tributaries and rivers on the Eastern Shore, with some 260,000 fingerlings raised and released this spring.The Department of Natural Resources uses its Unicorn Lake Fish Hatchery in Queen Anne's County to spawn adult bass taken from tidal waters, then allows the newborns to develop in a sympathetic environment."Fish hatcheries are needed to provide more bass for tidal waters," said DNR Secretary Torrey C. Brown, "because many more young bass are able to survive in the hatchery ponds than in the wild."

The wind was freshening from the southeast as we ducked in behind Carroll Island at midday recently. The morning had been entertaining, if not frantic, with a half-dozen 1- to 3-pound largemouth bass boated and released over a three-hour period.But with the wind rising, the tin boat was becoming uncomfortable and in the lee of the low island shorelines there was a respite from the swell and the possibility of more good fishing.Early last month, the Department of Natural Resources released the results of creel surveys and population estimates for the tidal freshwater areas of the upper Chesapeake Bay -- and its findings showed a 32 percent increase in the largemouth bass population since 1988.

The chilly, wet weather of the last couple of days notwithstanding, spring really is here, and with it the urge to get out and wet a fishing line.For a few years now, Maryland has had a closed season on bass from March 1 to June 15, but this just means that you cannot keep any during that time.There is absolutely nothing illegal about catching and releasing all the bass you can hook, and as experienced bass anglers know only too well, right now through May are top bassing times.Here are some tips that I have picked up over the years that may help you put some of April's bass on a roll of film.

Crabs are in the news. They were darned scarce this summer. The state just proposed permanent new limits on their harvest. And many crabbers are furious. What is a good citizen of the Chesapeake to make of it? Here's a primer on the issue: Why are crabs so important? People love to eat them, of course. Nearly a decade ago, crabs surpassed oysters as the most valuable catch from the bay. Lots of other Chesapeake critters depend on crabs for food, including: eels, striped bass, croakers, cobia, red drum, black drum, toadfish, sand bar and bull sharks, cow nose rays, speckled trout, weakfish, catfish, gars and largemouth bass.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Almost 20 years ago, a state fisheries biologist requested federal money to study and improvelargemouth bass fishing. It took three years to get a management program in the Chesapeake estuary under way.Since 1977, Leon Fewlass and a handful of biologists and technicians have been part of a booming recreational fishery built almost from scratch."