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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - May 8, 2000 The Bass Corridor Since 1995, some members of the business community hereabouts have been touting the K-10 Corridor Technology Plan. Their idea is to turn the communities along Kansas Highway 10 into a replica of Austin, Tex, or Boulder, Colo. According to the proponents of this scheme, the corridor will start at the new Sprint campus at its eastern terminal and run past the Oz Park at De Soto, ending at the Kansas University Campus and a $21.8 million resort at Clinton Lake State park. The boosters sometimes call it "America's Smart Corridor." Once upon a time, before Austin and Boulder became polluted by the byproducts of the high-tech industry, they were paradises for anglers and hunters and were the hometowns of such famous fishermen as Ralph Manns and John Gierach. Now these environs are an outdoorsman's nightmare Thus, if Lawrence were to become another Boulder or Austin, real estate prices would skyrocket, and our Arcadian world would disappear. Then as the countryside vanishes, traffic congestion would reign. Such a quagmire is an anathema to most outsdoorsmen and other sane folks around eastern Kansas who don't want our rustic landscape to be cluttered with plastic, concrete and automobiles. That's why avid and talented anglers such as a Gail Bessey of Overland Park writes letters, castigating this plan. Other critics have begun to call this copycat project "America's Dumbest Corridor," and they ask why the world needs another Boulder or Austin, which are theselves imitations of Silicon Valley and North Carolina's Research Triangle. According to many observers, before the mid-1980s, Austin was a lot like Lawrence. It took only a few minutes to get to Lake Travis, and it was an easy drive to Lake Marbles Falls, Lake Buchanan, and Lake Lyndon B. Johnson. But since Dell Computer and other high-tech firms arrived, Austin has become so overbuilt that it is an arduous task to fish the four big reservoirs on its western outskirts. Moreover, those lakes are overcrowded. On the other hand, the Micropterus corridor on U.S. 75 is more to the liking of Bessey and other area bass anglers. It is where many bass fishermen from Johnson and Douglas counties go to escape the burgeoning chaos that clutters K-10 and Clinton Lake. This passageway to Kansas' piscatorial nirvana starts at Sabetha in the north and runs to Yates Center to the south. And some fishermen contend that it even extends past the town of Buffalo and Wilson State Fishing Lake, going all the way to Independence with Elk City Lake on its western flank and Big Hill Lake immediately to the east and Montgomery State Fishing Lake to the south. At most of the public waterways along this roadway, the largemouth bass is the most predominate game fish, but anglers can tangle with smallmouth bass and an occasional spotted bass. Some of the lakes are large, ranging from 5,000 to 7,000 acres, and other are small, encompassing less than a hundred acres. Such lakes as Banner Creek at Holton, Carbondale East and Lebo City Lake, which opened on May 6, charge an access fee. Day in, day out, the two best lakes are Holton's Banner Creek and Woodson State Fishing Lake near Yates Center. And when the wind dies, Coffey County Lake is the state's finest smallmouth abode. According to Bessey and her husband, Dick, the best way to catch scads of bass at these waterways during the summer is to employ a medium-action spinning outfit and a split-shot rig that is adorned with either a Berkely Power Tube or four-inch Power Worm. |
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