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A fishing trip to 'Lunker City'
Sep 21, 2020
Wildside column:
My recent sojourn in Lunker City, a not quite mythical realm where big smallmouth bass leap and thrash, provided welcome respite from the cares of 2020.
Though not an actual place on the map, Lunker City exists. You’re in it when you know a giant bass could greet your next cast.
From Aug. 17 through Sept. 3, I caught 12 smallmouth bass that met my 18-inch lunker standard and at least that many near lunkers and mini-lunkers.
I caught the last of the dozen on Sept. 3, just days before a weeklong rain ended the drought of 2020, which provided a three-week window to fish the Wapsipinicon River in chest waders — my preferred method.
Though ended by a foot-and-a-half rise in the river, my lunker interlude lasted longer than I thought it would, and it was fun while it lasted.
To put that in historical perspective, 12 lunkers would have made a good season in the bygone days of low summer river flows, when you could wear out a new pair of waders every year. My current pair, four years old, barely leak.
At the river’s lowest ebb, just before the rain started on Sept. 6, I waded across in three spots, the water never once wetting my waders above the knee. At one of those spots, I crossed from bank to bank in ankle-deep water, which helps explain why the only boat I saw during that 17-day interval was powered by a jet-drive outboard.
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