I first fished the famous bass lakes of Bienville Plantation in north Florida in May of 2004 with Rob Shuman. The big lake, known on the Plantation simply as Lake 14, is unlike any place I’ve ever seen. It's an old overgrown phosphate pit and covers about thirteen hundred acres, but instead of big open water, it has endless alleys of waterways bordered by narrow fingers of land and small islands. From the sky, the lake looks like a huge maze.

On the water, everywhere you look, you miles of banks with fallen trees, cattails, and hydrilla. The first thing we did was ask the pro at the Plantation shop where the good spots were. He said we could catch any size bass any where at all in the Lake . . . not very specific, but probably true.

Because the lakes are old mines, depths change rapidly and are unpredictable from the shoreline. Hydrilla spreads out all over the lake, but the staff periodically cuts back on the weeds in most areas of the lake -- they say this releases the baitfish out of their cover and jump-starts bass growth. The best spots for bass seem to be floating hydrilla beds and areas where the hydrilla abuts cattails or other vegetation types.

So, the next vacation we had, we went back for a second try. Day One, we fished for eight hours and caught seven bass. Day Two, we fished for nine hours and caught two bass. Day Three, figuring anyone can catch panfish, we got crickets for bream, rigged up crappie reels, and ventured over to Low Bush Bay -- or, as everyone at the Plantation called it, "a world-renowned crappie hole." We got lost trying to find the place and drove around for an hour and a half. Apparently it's so famous they don't feel the need to put up signs. Of course, once we got there, we didn't catch anything.

So, in one final effort, we moved back over to Lake 14, fished for a while, and were ready to settle for occasional bream and crappie.

So it's late Tuesday afternoon, and we're covered in dust from our unintentional tour of the phosphate pits while searching for Low Bush Bay earlier that day. The sun is beating down hard at Lake 14, and we haven't caught any fish. Both of us are sort of leaned back into the boat, lines drifting aimlessly in the water, when we see a boat turn the corner of the cove where we had just finished fruitlessly plunking the water. There's an old man with professor-like glasses leading the trolling motor and a younger fellow in the back of the boat. In contrast to our sorry condition, they both seem happy.

Rob yells out to them, "How you doin' - caught any fish?", expecting only the familiar gripes in return.

The old professor calls back, "Oh, 'bout thirty or forty. How about you?"

We both jump out of our seats. Surely he's lying. "Are you serious -- we haven't caught anything." The Professor sticks the knife in now: "Well, it's been pretty slow today -- on good days we'll get fifty or more."

So we begin to interrogate them on their methods, or actually, their one method, or, The Method. The old man instructs us to take a watermelon red stick bait (not the expensive Yamamoto Senko, but rather the cheap Wal-Mart version, Tiki Stick by Wave Worms) and stick a hook through the center of it. This is called "wacky style" worm fishing, and we've heard of it, and even have some watermelon red stick baits in the boat, but have never really tried the technique, because it always seemed to us that the exposed hook would catch on every possible branch and weed. The old man tells us that the key is to cast it up to the hydrilla near the bank and let it sit. He says, "Let it sit for just as long as you can stand it, then shake your rod tip to impart action to the worm. If there's no fish, reel in and cast again."

He began to reset our expections for fish-catching at Lake 14, saying that we should catch a minimum of 30 per day, on really good days up to 90, and that most bass would be around two pounds, but that, with that many fish bites, there will always been some "good hits" -- fish in the four to eight pound range. He said he's caught several over nine, the biggest around 11 pounds. He said that others have suggested that there aren't more monster lunkers at Lake 14 because the staff may shock the waters and take out the big ones to stock their smaller ponds, which are used for guided trips and TV fishing shows. While the old man was at it, he also held forth on proper crappie fishing techniques and the influence of rains and weather on the fish bite.

We were dubious of his claims, but had nothing better to do than try his suggestion. In his first five casts with the stick-worm hooked wacky style, Rob caught two bass. In the next two hours, we caught twenty. The next day, fishing wacky-style, we caught forty. Rob got a five-plus pounder (conservative estimate) on the hook, but his line snapped as he maneuvered the fish up to the boat.

By Wednesday, we had grown so accustomed to catching fish, we forgot to be grateful for all the fishing action. Our complaints had shifted to a new level -- all these 1 to 2 pound fish, but no big ones. Nevertheless, by the end of the trip, I was ready to sign up for a membership, which I did. In the past year, I have probably gotten about two weeks of water-time at Bienville. At first, I continued to try different methods, but never got the same results as with the wacky worm. Now I don’t even bother experimenting. With the watermelon-red Tiki Stick, the fishing has always been good.

Part Two of this article, A Year of Bass at Bienville, is much more intersting, because it deals with the successful trips I've made to Bienville Plantation, and the bass my friends and I have caught there.