Martyn White | Thursday, 26 May 2022
Last week Chuck and I decided that even though the weather had been all over the place Monday would be the first float tube session of the season. After last season's puncture debacle I made sure to do a test inflation on Friday and watched the weather forecast jump around with a mix of hope and dismay.
Things didn't look too bad come Monday, and we went to one of our usual haunts in search of bass and panfish. We got to the Shin-Tone river and were quite surprised to find reasonable water clarity and just a light breeze. This "river" is really more of a canal designed to prevent flooding and give a good supply of water for the rice paddies, it has multiple sluice gates which were unfortunately being opened and closed at regular intervals causing the river to flow in both directions making things difficult. The slow water loving bass and bluegill don't like it much and neither did we. I only managed to lose a bass that ate a little jig spider I was fishing near some sticks on the hope of some bluegill. It's pretty hard to keep a decent bass out of a snag with a 3wt and a 4lb tippet!
By lunch we decided it was time for a rethink, so threw the tubes in the back of the car and headed over to another river nearby, a much more natural and slow flowing body of water. We parked up and had a look only to discover it was absolutely filthy with suspended silt. No good. So back in the car and a drive to Ushikunuma, a decent sized lake of maybe 500 acres. We thought we might be able to find some fish in one of the sheltered arms. The idea being that the bluegill should be staging shallow pre-spawn and the bass would be following them. Best laid plans.
We turned up at the West arm and started looking for a put in. Eventually we found one and started getting ready only to have a highly aggressive swan come and make its displeasure clear, possibly there was a nest nearby. But anyway, having experienced swan attacks in the tube before, we decided to move on. So it was over to the middle arm, for a look and see. But no there's been a lot of work done on the banks there making access hard and we were running out of time. East arm it was and after briefly ending up down some winding residential streets we got there, got set up and got floating. Sadly they were flooding the paddy fields there which along with the rain and wind of the week before had left the water filthy with visibilty less than a foot. We gave it another hour and decided to accept defeat.
Not a great fishing day, but we had a good craic and explored a few places that we'll revisit when conditions are better. Hopefully things will stabilize by the June full moon so we can target the bass that are feeding on the spawning bluegill. We'll see.