One Saturday morning in May, a beautiful sunrise set the New Mexico sky ablaze as we launched my Tracker bass boat from the ramp at Santa Rosa Lake, and the well known phrase “red sky in the morning, sailors take warning” came to mind. The weather forecast was for 15 to 25 mile per hour winds, and at 6 am the wind was already blowing at about 20.
Santa Rosa Lake is a great place to fish on windy days. The big island in the lake make it easy to find places to fish that are protected from the wind. One of the reasons I have been fishing out of a Bass Tracker for over 20 years is that my Pro Team 185 cuts through white caps easily due to the “V” shape of its “Revolution Hull”.
This morning I was fishing with my good buddy Bill Robison, and we headed due East from launch area directly into the wind to avoid getting wet from the white caps.
I pulled the Tracker Bass boat up to the island with a calm shoreline and we began casting crank-baits and top-water lures near lay-downs (trees that have fallen into the water). Nearly 30 minutes had passed without us catching a fish so I decided to move to another spot on the island with my Minn Kota trolling motor. The wind was now blowing 2 foot white caps through an opening between 2 islands. When we reached the other side of the cut, Bill cast spinner bait toward a tree that had fallen into the water. Now Bill, and his son Grant are famous for casting lures about 3 feet beyond their intended targets, and true to form, his lure landed in the top of this lay-down tree about 4 feet above the water, wrapping the line around several branches in the process.
When these mishaps occur, I can’t resist chapping Bill’s buns by making snide remarks and asking him what kind of fish he is trying to catch that lives up in that tree. So I start ribbing Bill and began pulling us over to the hang-up by using my Minn Kota trolling motor, which is somewhat difficult this morning due to the wind howling at 20 miles per hour. As I am making pretty slow progress toward the tree, I decide to take a chance and make a long cast across the opening between the island and the shoreline directly into the white caps, and a fish instantly slams my lure. It’s a nice 2 lb. sand (white) bass. Bill holds open the lid on the live well (as I have trained him to do) and I pitch the sandy in from my position in the front of my Tracker boat.
We are now about 20 feet from where Bill’s spinner bait is hung up in the tree top still making pretty slow progress against the wind, so just for the fun of it, I turn and make another cast to approximately the same spot that I caught the first fish. I make two cranks on the reel and another sand bass slams my crank-bait. After Bill holds the lid open once again, I also pitch it accurately into the live well. (With so much practice, I’ve only missed dropping the fish into the live well twice in the last 10 years.)
About 10 feet now separates us from Bill’s lure in the tree top, and he is getting a little crazy watching me catch one fish after another. “Come on dude, get me over there so I can get that spinner bait out of the tree” he shouts as I make yet another cast to the same spot. Same result, “fish on” I proudly exclaim, and Bill goes pretty nuts after watching me catch 3 fish on 3 successive casts to exactly the same spot.
The spinner bait that Bill is fishing with costs about $4, so he’s not going to break off the line and let the lure fall into the lake. Then to my amazement, the engineering lobe of Bill’s brain kicks in and he does something I have never seen him do before. After he opens the lid to the live well for me to pitch in the third sand bass, Bill releases the line on the rod he’s fishing with by opening the bail on his reel, then he tosses the rod down with the line and the spinner bait still attached into the bottom of the boat so he can fish now and retrieve the lure later. He then picks up another rod that is already rigged with crank bait and casts it to the “magic spot” as I hook up with my fourth fish in a row. He also has instant success! Bass “Slamma Jamma!”
After over 20 minutes of the best fishing we have ever had together, I manage to maneuver the boat close enough for Bill to pick up his rod out of the bottom of the boat and take up the slack line so he can finally retrieve his spinner bait from the lay-down treetop. For almost 2 hours we catch fish after fish on almost every cast out of that little cut between the island and the main lake shoreline. But it isn’t even close to being over yet.
The wind is now blowing at the forecasted 25 miles per hour and the trolling motor is not powerful enough to keep us on the “magic spot”, so we use the big motor on my Tracker Bass boat to place an anchor up wind to allow us to play out enough rope to position us perfectly between the island and the main shoreline. This is a great tip. When you’re fishing on windy days, have your anchor ready by running the rope through the eye on the bow where you attach the boat to the trailer. Then you can tie off on a cleat and the boat will face directly into the wind and not sway back & fourth.
Now that the boat is anchored, we can easily reach either side of the cut with our casts and we caught about a dozen bass about 2 feet from the bank on the far side. We were having an absolute blast!
Cast after cast we caught fish after fish in a howling New Mexico spring windstorm. Dozens of sand bass, large mouth bass, smallbouth bass. It’s what fishermen dream about doing when they go to heaven. What a hoot!
The water between the island and the main lakeshore line was only about 8 feet deep, but the bottom dropped into the old river channel down to over 20 feet in a very short distance out from the cut. We figured that the fish must have been stacked up like cords of firewood as they positioned themselves just at the edge of the drop off. The high wind must have been blowing the shad baitfish through the cut and the bass were picking them off like popcorn.
What a day. When it was over, we figured that we had caught well over 120 fish, and when Bill counted the fish that we took out of the live well to be cleaned, the total was 28. And being the great guy that he is, “Wild Bill” cleaned them all.
So the next time the spring winds are blowing, and you think it’s too windy to go fishing, grab a buddy and find a narrow passage between two landmasses, then let the wind be your friend.