Side Effects

I have a love/hate relationship with winter fishing.  I pretty much hate winter and love fishing.  However, this year I’m loving winter.  Mostly because winter thinks it’s spring.  Instead of freezing cold temperatures and sluggish bites, it’s been warm and the bite has been insane.  Some days the big bass are biting and on other days the numbers are out to play.  It’s been awesome but there are some side effects I wasn’t expecting.

Instead of sitting around in my kayak with popsicles for fingers I’m seriously wondering if I’ll have a sun burn at the end of the day.  That’s my kind of winter fishing.  Also frozen digits have been replaced with bass arm and bass hand.  I explain these conditions for those not familiar. 

Bass arm is the pain associated with the handling of large bass.  It’s an overuse injury resulting from the stress placed on the arm.  Bass arm can have some pain associated but is usually not life threatening.  It can happen to anyone but usually found in those that normally only catch small bass…this guy!   Other than these few symptoms, not much is known about bass arm because no one ever complains about the pain caused from handling large bass. 

Warm enough for these guys to come out

Bass hand, on the other hand, is much more common.  It’s the scaring that happens to the hand from lip gripping large quantities of bass.  Common signs of bass hand include, minor scraping near the thump, slight pain, bragging and showing off of the scared hand to anyone that will make eye contact with the angler.  It’s generally the result of a great day of catching and prized among the angling community.

The remainder of winter I hope to continue experiencing bass arm and bass hand on a regular basis.   I’m sure it’ll get back to normal and I’ll have to hate it again.  Until then, I’m fishing hard and dealing with the side effects of winter fishing