“Look over there!  In that little inlet.”

Jim followed where Ron was pointing. The waters of Bennett Lake lay smooth and inviting, like they rarely did in central Texas, where a stiff westerly breeze was almost a given. The warm sun peered through the wispy clouds in the December 1 sky, prompting the two erstwhile fishermen to don company-logo baseball caps and sunglasses.

Suddenly, in the placid shallow inlet on the lake’s inlet flats, the water erupted in a titanic flurry of violent spray.  This could only mean one thing, a realization that injected adrenaline into Jim’s central nervous system – schooling bass slaughtering defenseless bait fish.

Without words passing between them, the men reeled in their crankbaits with reckless abandon, Ron swung the aged aluminum v-bottom boat around, and threw the 50-lb thrust trolling motor on high speed. As the heavy boat lunged through the glassy water, the men rummaged through their tackle boxes and bags for the perfect bait to target the marauding predators.  It was time for the hunters to become the hunted.

“What have you got?” Ron asked, his voice hoarse with anticipation.

“An old Bill Dance walk-the-dog bait, and two poppers.”

Jim’s heart pounded, and then sank like a 3-ounce catfish weight. This trip had been impromptu, and he had only his back-up tackle from his Houston location. Most of his best stuff lay useless back in his garage in Dallas. In it were a dozen Zara spooks of various sizes and colors, haunting him in his pregnant isolation. Not having the lures he needed was the Murphy’s Law of fishing, finding him guilty and sentencing him, even as the targets of his desire charged the surface of the lake again, and the bait fish leaped and scattered in a sparkling fountain of fear.

“I got nothing,” grumbled Ron. “The grass is too heavy in this part of the lake to throw anything that doesn’t float.”

Jim spotted a second spook-type bait, and tossed it to Ron, who struggled to tie-it on while guiding the boat, which seemed to move with the speed of a river barge against a flooded current.

And then they were ready. Waiting, waiting for the boat to get within range, fearing that the surface action would cease even before they got a cast off.  That was the way of baitfish busting bass, like the sirens of Greek legend, luring the lustful fishermen to one spot, only to disappear and reappear across the lake. Many a team of partners had wasted their vacation hours and their battery charge chasing the she-devils again and again.

But this tragedy wasn’t to be. Just as they reached the limit of their casting range, Ron killed the motor, and huge bass charged the bait ball like killer whales breaking the surf in pursuit of sea lions.

“That’s a big one,” Jim whispered, spotting the dark back of a killer queen among the frothy turmoil.  Would she come up for the tail-walking bait, or was it too large to “match the hatch?” Schooling bass could be finicky, ignoring any baits tossed in their path, to the great frustration of the tosser.

His hands shaking and heart beating even harder, Jim drew back his spinning rig. The old rod was a relic of his childhood days, a Spiral Graphite model from Bass Pro Shops, that he’d bought nearly 40 years earlier, when he and his father were honing their craft. He missed the old man, who’d passed 4 years earlier. What he’d pay now to have him here now on this beauty peace of water, chasing this quarry. He could hear his father’s gruff voice yelling, “Get ‘em!  Get ‘em!”

Jim lashed out with the old rod and the budget Daiwa spinning reel.  The timing was perfect, and the rod flexed and recoiled, sending the bait soaring in a perfect 45-degree arc toward the boiling water. Jim prayed the two-year old copolymer line, which had coiled with lack of use, would not twist and stick in the rod’s eyes, killing the lure’s beautiful flight.

But the lure carried onward like a rising hawk, then pivoted and dove, landing exactly where the bass had cut the surface in its deadly strike.

The lure was way out at the end of his casting range, so far that teasing the lure into its classic walking action would be difficult, even with a rod designed for it, and not the medium heavy, pre-1990 graphite stick he was holding. He reeled the slack down to just where it wasn’t quite tight.

“Come on, baby,” Jim whispered. He pivoted the rod tip down close to the water for a horizontal pull, then gave it the first tentative tug. The bait stayed high, and the nose dodged to the right. Jim tugged again, and like a dream, the nose dodged left, like a windshield wiper across the water’s surface.

“Take it, big girl.” Time seemed to stop and start with the same pulsing rhythm as the plug, tick, tick, tick.

The lure had walked about three feet, nearly out of the circle of ripples from the last assault. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t the right size, or shape, or color, or perhaps Jim wasn’t holding his tongue right. A couple more pulls, and the lure would be out of the strike zone.

Ker-sploosh! The water under the lure seemed to drop an inch, and then a dark maw rose from the depths and inhaled the shiny plug.

Jim’s heart jumped. Would she hit or miss? Bass would strike a walking lure with aggression and anger, knocking it away with no intention of eating it, the most brutal act of rejection a fisherman could face. Was this siren toying with him, sneering at his offering, kissing him only to break his heart?

But the line drew tight, and the tip of the rod bent forward with sudden pressure. In the instinct honed from thousands of hooksets over the 50 plus years of his fishing career, Jim jerked the rod back with just enough force to drive the treble hooks home, but not enough to yank the lure from the fish’s clench.  The set held, and the fight was on!

“I got her!”

Ron assisted his partner by reeling in, and using the motor expertly to hold the boat steady. “Nice one!  Get her in here.”

She charged toward the shore, and then turned deep, dragging the lure and line into the heavy salad visible beneath the surface. Jim leaned back against the weight, holding the rod tip at a 45-degree angle to the water, trying to lift her from the weeds, at the same time discouraging her from breaching. If she came to the surface and tail-walked, she could shake her head like a mad tarpon and throw the hook.

The fish broke free from the weeds, and charged for deeper water.

“Stay down, girlie.” Jim swung the tip low again, praying now against that fatal tail-walk. But her ploy would be different, to run silent and deep like the mythical WWII submarine. But she was fighting against a superior enemy. The power of monofilament line and carbon fiber and human tenacity would be too much for the raw energy of a natural predator in a life and death struggle. Her short-burst muscle fibers were built for ambush hunting and sprints, and not watery marathons like her cousins the salmon or redfish. She lunged, she juked, she dove into the weeds, but steady pressure coaxed her back. She tired.

And then she lay beside the silver boat, a capture siren, a dethroned queen. Jim held the rod steady, then grasped her lip, and lifted the fine three-pound leviathan from the water. She lay beaten on the bench seat. In an act of extreme respect of one hunter to another, Jim eased the treble hook points from her mouth cartilage gently with pliers, held her up for Ron to admire, and eased her gently back into the water.

Ten more bass would find their hunt interrupted by the power of the walking lure in the next two hours, and a few dozen more to Ron and Jim’s other offerings, the crank bait, the weightless senko, and the trick worm. Ron would top Jim’s best with three fish between 3 and 4 pounds, all beautiful sirens in their own right.  They would be joined by a flock of cranky crappie who couldn’t resist the stop-and-go swim of the shiny crank over the peninsula’s long flat.

But none would remain in Jim’s heart and dreams like the Queen Bass of the Tail-Walking Dance.