Rock bass just don't get any respect

Since I am boatless now, I must rely upon the good graces of others when it comes to helping me get on the bigger lakes to hunt for smallmouth bass.

I literally missed my chance the other day when the great Spence Petros called to invite me to join him for several hours of bass fishing on Lake Geneva.

It was not one of my better days because I hadn't slept in two days and my knees were refusing to cooperate. I told him so, which gave the senior citizen an opening to jump all over me for perpetually being laden with physical ailments almost every time we had planned an outing.

His eminence doesn't like others knowing and seeing him hurting. even though he always manages to come across 100 percent fit and pain free.

And when I checked with him later, he complained that he only caught 45 largemouth instead of breaking his usual daily catch records.

Oh well, there's always another day if we live long enough.

A couple of weeks before this particular Petros extravaganza, I went to Geneva with a single purpose in mind: to find a brigade of the lake's famous rock bass.

Here is one species that gets less respect than a bottom-feeding carp. All one has to do is sit in a boat with someone claiming to be a whiz in the largemouth and smallmouth departments. And when a lowly rocky takes a swipe at a jig and comes swimming to the boat, the angler's disappointment is clearly noted with profanity added to vocal disgust.

I, however, love to catch these awesome bait stealers and street fighters.

My tactics are simple and easy enough for anyone to utilize. I bring along a couple of dozen night crawlers as well as tying small hooks on the ends of my lines.

1 look for arcs on the sonar screen, thinking I've discovered a hoard of rocky bass or better yet a school of suspended smallies. With a slip float affixed to the line with an approximate depth to start with, I begin my quest to find the rock bass.

I'm already imagining hearing the catcalls from the peanut gallery, especially from those of you who never took the time to try catching some of these little fireballs. A lot of fishermen catch rock bass by accident while searching for the main high value targets.

Rock bass, depending on their level of hunger, will hit just about anything. You can be safe with a minnow or leech and yet the best picking for me centers on a half-piece of crawler threaded on a No. 8 hook or tiny jig.

Len moved his boat to water that had a depth reading of 15 feet. We both decided that chasing small mouth would be put on the back burner, yet there was always a tiny bit of hope a smallie would stumble along and inhale the night crawler.

We didn't wait long for some action.

The floats started dancing around and then disappeared beneath the surface. Could the strike come from the lake's jumbo bluegills?

That was my first guess, but when I set the hook and watched my line shoot straight out from the boat I just simply thought it was either a largemouth or smallie.

Wrong again.

Up came a fat rock bass measuring almost 11 inches. The process repeated itself a few dozen times for me and Len. We both agreed as to why other fishermen never appreciate the aggressive nature of a rocky. It's just not in their mindset to invest the time and effort to haul these scrappy fish out of their secret bottom-hovering sanctuaries.

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, catch his radio show 7-9 a.m. Sundays on WGCO 1590-AM (livestreamed at www.1590WCGO.com) and get more content at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.