Fishing is sluggish on the lakes and reservoirs right now, and the trout stream waters are trickling way too low, but Billy, Brett and I found a hot bite at a big pond last week and caught dozens of fish: panfish, bass, and two surprises. I can’t tell you exactly where this spot is, or my brother would kill me, but we traveled not too far from the Shenango Valley and found a 10-acre pond at an old gravel pit on public land open to fishing year-round.

And what beautiful waters we discovered there. Brett inflated his float tube and began fly-casting the shallows for bluegills, while Billy and I launched his 16-foot canoe before 7 a.m. and set off across the pond. It was a windless cool cloudy morning, and the surface of the spring-fed waters was as smooth as a glass tabletop and just as transparent. I gazed down into the depths and became mesmerized by the visual clarity. The bottom of the pond was lush with weedy greenery, and you could see every detail, even at depths of 10 or 15 feet.

Ten minutes into our morning, Billy caught the first fish of the day, a foot-long largemouth bass taken on a jointed Rapala minnow lure. A few minutes later, he landed another, bigger bass. Then I caught three largemouths in 15 minutes on three different lures, a jointed Rapala, a big crankbait lure painted to imitate a red-eyed rock bass, and a translucent white crankbait that became my top lure of the day.

Later, Billy tied on a white jig tipped with a purple rubber “Gulp” leech and boated five fish in seven casts. By 10 a.m., when we hauled the canoe out, we had caught 25 largemouth bass, all between 11 and 17 inches, and — much to our surprise — two big rainbow trout, both taken on the white crankbait. I don’t know who stocked the rainbows in that pond, but the spring-fed cool waters and even cooler deep holes must account for their survival there.

We learned some quick fishing lessons during our three hours on the pond, too. First, don’t linger in one spot and over-fish. The bass became spooky after we caught three or four in a particular location, so we kept moving, and the canoe proved ideal for that tactic on a pond of this size.

Also, we saw advantages in keeping two spinning outfits rigged up, because of sudden changes in depth as we drifted over deep holes created by gravel-dredging and shallow waters around islands and weedy humps in the pond bottom.

Crankbaits and jigs performed best in the deep waters, while Rapala minnow lures and spinnerbaits served the shallows.

Billy kept two lured-up rigs handy, but my backup was a fly-fishing outfit, which I intended to use for panfish but never did, even though I saw Brett successfully fly-rodding across the pond, because I was having too much fun catching big fish on my ultralight spinning gear.

Our best tactic was to paddle in around 25 yards from shorelines and cast toward land. We never caught a fish close to the boat — apparently clear waters work both ways — but we could watch our fish fight 10 or 20 yards out because of the visibility, and that was entertaining.

Some of the largemouths stayed deep as they fought, while others leaped from the surface and performed aerial acrobatics for our viewing pleasure. One big old bass I had on broke water and spit the lure out cleanly, which made Billy and me laugh. Just a quicker way to perform catch and release, we agreed.

I’m pretty much a dedicated stream fisherman for wild trout, but this bass-fishing in a big pond turned out to be a fine outdoors experience, too. Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.

Trail Notes: I haven’t mentioned this in several months, but I continue to add brief monthly “What’s New?” entries to the website. Check out the May, June and July entries for news about trips to the Smokies and Key West, the sale of my country cottage and two new stories posted on the site.

Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. He can be contacted at 317-985-2870 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his website at www.donfeigert.com.