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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - April 8, 2001 April and May offer anglers action at Coffey
County Lake But upon its opening, an air of dismay erupted. Except for the savviest walleye anglers, Coffey proved to be difficult to fish. It was especially trying for the bass anglers who were accustomed to wielding heavy tackle and probing thickets of brush and flooded timber to catch largemouth bass. These fishermen were flummoxed by Coffey's many miles of riprap, the pondweed that flourished on its many long shallow points and the smallmouth. Then when a harsh wind sent ranks of white caps coursing Coffey's 5,000 acres, even the walleye fishermen, who normally prayed for wind, found it to be a treacherous lake. Those perilous waves caused three fishermen to drown on Dec. l5, 1996, and two more perished on Nov. 2, 1997. In addition, most of the fish, excluding the white bass and the crappie, were emaciated and often lethargic. But during the past four years, some dramatic changes for the better have occurred at Coffey. Lake officials established a set of stringent safety measures, and no lives have been lost. Leonard Jirak and Don Haines, the lake's biologists, have altered the creel limits, encouraging anglers to kill a few more fish. Not only have the new creel limits caused the walleye and smallmouth bass to gain weight, but the fishing has improved markedly. Nowadays Jirak and several knowledgeable anglers call Coffey the best walleye and smallmouth lake on the southern plains, and the lake lived up to that high praise this winter and early spring. Roy Benjamin of Emporia is one of the cognoscenti, who fishes Coffey at least four times a week. He is also a 62-year-old erstwhile largemouth bass fisherman of great repute and l988 holder of the Kansas B.A.S.S. Federation Mr. Bass title. But to catch the denizens of Coffey, he has abandoned his heavy largemouth bass tackle and tactics. Instead he employs small lures on spinning tackle, and he catches fish galore: crappie, wipers, walleye, largemouth, smallmouth, white bass, channel cats. His biggest smallmouth weighed four pounds and heftiest largemouth weighed six pounds, four ounces. On a recent spring outing, when the wind angled out of the southeast from five to l3 mph and area thermometers registered a high of 48 degrees, Benjamin and a friend tangled with 64 fish on a 200-yard stretch of riprap. The bulk of them were largemouth and smallmouth bass, but the mix included a few walleye, channel cats and white bass. Several of the fish engulfed an 1/8-ounce crankbait, but most of them tried to eat either a three- or four-inch grub on either a 1/l6-ounce or 1/8-ounce jighead. Of course, all of those lures were manipulated on spinning tackle and light line. Benjamin catches fish day in, day out at Coffey. But his favorite days occur in late April and early May, when the crappie and smallmouth bass spawn.
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