Fishing is hard and unpleasant in the heat of summer, but night fishing is comfortable and fun.
Some of my best summer fishing trips were at night, especially those I took with Mitch Looper of Hackett when I lived in western Arkansas. Looper, who owns a chain of pizza parlors in the Fort Smith/Van Buren area, loves to fish small water supply reservoirs at night in the summer. One of his favorites is Ozark city reservoir, a small patch of blue that you can see from Interstate 40 just east of the Arkansas 23 exit.
That's where Looper caught the biggest bass of his life, a pure northern strain largemouth that weighed 14 pounds, 7 ounces. Looper's recollections of that night produced some of the greatest quotes that will never be fit to print.
Catching that caliber of bass requires an extreme degree of stealth and subtlety. That means no lights and a minimum amount of noise. I've always scoffed at the notion that fish are sensitive to human voices, but if you were in Looper's boat at night, you spoke only in murmurs.
Depth perception is a big challenge to night fishing. All you see on the bank is shadows, and it's easy to fool yourself into believing you're 30 yards offshore when you're only about half as far. You figure it out pretty quick after you've thrown into the trees a couple of times.
You can't see your line, either, so you have to tune your nerves to be hyper-sensitive to the slightest vibration in your rod. You have to process that information quickly to determine if you've nicked a rock or a log, or if a bass inhaled your jig or worm.
It's easy to mistake one for the other because if you're too slow, a bass will spit out a jig almost instantly. An indecisive angler will set the hook too late and con himself into believing it was a false alarm.
To see this in action, find an old copy of Glenn Lau's classic video, "Bigmouth Forever." It is still the definitive bass behavior video that made anglers reshape the way they fish for bass.
Largemouths aren't the only game for night fishermen. Everything feeds at night, including crappie, catfish, walleyes, hybrids, white bass and stripers. You can catch them all by fishing under lights.
My first experience at night light fishing was with an elderly uncle at a houseboat he had on Brodie Lake at Wright. He sunk a big brushpile off the end of his dock. The lights hung over the water on wooden posts attached to the dock. He turned them on well after dark and waited for them to set up a food chain.
Insects naturally swarmed under the lights and fell in the water. Small fish came up to eat the insects, and bigger fish came up to eat the smaller fish. They were usually white crappie that came out of the brushpile, and I've never caught more or bigger. We also caught some big catfish and a few small bass.
Modern lighting units are compact, and they enable you to be mobile. You can get submersible units with multiple LEDs at any major sporting goods store. Some are battery powered, and some plug into cigarette lighter sockets.
Waterproof LED strips can also transform a kayak into a night fishing vessel. You can mount red, white or green LEDs on the hull above or below the waterline and wire them through the hull to a battery and switch panel. You can also install red or green LEDs in the cockpit to make it easier to find baits and tie knots.
It might take an hour or more for the food chain to form, so be patient. Have a bite to eat, sip a cool drink and enjoy some good conversation. When you see schools of baitfish swirling around the lights, you'll know conditions are about right for some excitement.
The wild card is that you never know what you'll catch. If you're anchored over a brushpile on Lake Ouachita, you expect to catch crappie. You'll have a light action rod, light line and light jigs or minnows. That rig will also handle the big bream that come out to play at night.
Occasionally, though, a big striper will come to call, and then you'll have an adventure. Unpredictability is all part of the fun, and it's even more fun to land a big fish on light tackle.
My most exciting night fishing experience was on the Ouachita River with Mark Roberts of Maumelle. We were under the lights at Remmel Dam fishing for walleye about 90 minutes before dawn, so naturally we had light tackle. My rig was an Eagle Claw ultralight baitcasting rod with a tiny Shimano CT-51 reel spooled with 6-pound test line.
I cast a Long A Bomber stickbait in rainbow trout pattern. The lure sat on the surface while I untangled a backlash. A 14-pound striper smashed that lure and began one of the two most intense fishing fights of my life. The other was catching a trophy snook under lights near St. Petersburg, Fla.
It took about 30 minutes, but I landed the striper.
I spent the rest of the day napping in air-conditioned comfort, and my family ate that striper for supper.
Sports on 07/10/2016