Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 @ 09:06 AM
We recently had the chance to sit down with noted smallmouth and big water expert Joe Balog about the differences between largemouth and smallmouth crankbait techniques. Joe has won in excess of $250,000 dollars fishing the Great Lakes and is a past Everstart and BASS Open winner. He is a designer and has created several lures and products specifically for the Great Lakes, including the first ever goby lure. He provides some excellent insights into subtle differences between the two species, and how small changes in approach for smallmouth cranking can pay dividends and help put more bronzebacks in the boat.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, Apr 27, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
Tournament fishing revolves around decisions and changing with the conditions
By Shaye Baker (photos by Ricky Baker)
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 23, 2012 @ 09:11 AM
We recently spent a week with several top bass fishing pros from the Bassmaster Elite Series and the FLW Tour on Table Rock Lake in between the FLW Tour event there and the Bull Shoals event for the Elite Series. Table Rock is a highland reservoir with generally very clear water. However, because of the crazy weather we’ve had this spring, the lake actually turned over.
So it made for an interesting week of fishing. The water was still somewhat clear but it also had a weird tannic color to it. So you not only saw great crankbait and jerkbait fishing but you also had great finesse fishing with shaky heads, wacky rigs and drop shots. The lake was also still up some so there was quite a bit of cover in the lake. So we found it interesting that you could finesse fish in shallow cover.
But more interesting than the conditions was the trend among the pros that were finesse fishing. Every rod that was rigged for finesse fishing, save for one rod Aaron Martens pulled out just to shoot a video, had braid with a fluorocarbon leader. At least four pros we worked with who were finesse fishing were using some sort of light braid and a fluoro leader.
Obviously we’ve known and used the braid to fluoro combination a lot but over recent years, we have seen such an adoption of the tackle among the pros. The fact is nearly every pro we see now fishing finesse baits has the braid and fluoro combination working for them. Which prompted us to quiz some of these top sticks on why the braid.
“I don’t get as nervous as I used to,” Kriet said. “I mean I’ll still sometimes fish just straight 6-pound fluorocarbon. But it makes me really nervous when I get a big one on. If I can get away with 10-pound braid, then I’d rather use that and not be so worried about a big one busting me off.”
The strength of braid is obviously a critical factor among the pros. The fact that you can keep a small diameter and have increased breaking strength opens up a lot of great options for finesse fishing. Strength, however, may not be the most critical aspect of using braid though.
Another aspect we hadn’t considered until we fished with Shinichi Fukae was visibility. Fukae had about 6 rods on his deck while we were at Table Rock. The Japanese pro knows a lot about highly pressured bass in ultra clear water from his days spent fishing and competing on tough fisheries like Biwa in Japan.
He uses a 16-pound braid from Yoz-Ami YGK (not readily available in the US) with an 8-pound fluorocarbon leader. The braid is a sinking braid made of the highest quality materials very tightly woven. The tight weave gives him incredible distance on his casts but more importantly, the yellow line acts as a strike indicator for him on subtle bites especially on the fall.
“A lot of the bites occur on the fall with wacky jigheads, drop shot, split shot and shaky heads,” Fukae said. “With the yellow braid, I can see my line if a bite happens before I feel it.”
So there is strength and visibility aspects to the line, but other factors still may make it a better reason to change. We talked with Arizona pro Brett Hite about how he and his travelling partner, Brent Ehrler have adopted the braid in their finesse fishing.
“It’s all we use now,” Hite said. “We’ve experimented with a lot of braids and a lot of leaders and even things like knots, leader length and more. Now we have it down to a science and it’s made us so much more efficient – especially when you’re talking hooking and catching bass from a distance.”
Hite gave us an example of what he was talking about from a recent FLW Tour event on Lake Hartwell earlier this year. It’s not always just about casting distance but also the distance straight below the boat.
“Rob Newell had pulled up to me on the first day of the Lake Hartwell event as I’m pulling up to my starting spot,” Hite said. “I had a channel swing that came in close to a little island and I was way out off the swing easing up to my spot with my trolling motor. As I move up there I see an arch in 65 feet of water on my graph. So I open my bail and drop my Roboworm down on the fish. Next thing I know, the fish bites, I set and land a 5 ½-pounder. My first fish was a 5-plus-pound bass out of 65 feet of water. Braid gives you that ability to get a good fast drop with a drop shot because of the small diameter, but the no stretch to give you a good hookset at the end of a long drop or long cast.”
Hite has been experimenting with pound tests and really likes a 10 to 12 pound new prototype Sunline SX-1 that will be unveiled at ICAST this year. The new braid is a dense, tightly woven braid that sinks. It’s made specifically for those deeper contact presentations like shaky heads, drop shots, wacky rigs and more.
An added bonus to using the smaller diameter braid is casting distance. When you’re finesse fishing, it often means that water clarity is an issue. That also means the further you can keep your body and boat from the fish, the less defensive and spooky the fish will be. With 10-pound braid, we’ve found we can cast way ahead of the boat to unsuspecting bass. We caught a 15-pound limit this weekend on shaky heads by making very long casts to areas where bass were guarding fry. Keeping that distance in clear water was a big deal.
“A lot of anglers use too heavy a braid,” Hite said. “You want a 10 or 12 pound test braid with a good fluoro leader. If you go much over 20 pound test, it’s not as manageable on your reel. The 10-pound braid casts so good. You won’t believe how far it casts and how good your hooksets are. I use a 7-pound Sunline Sniper fluorocarbon leader that I measure to about the first guide in my rod.”
What Hite means is he ties the leader material to his braid with an Alberto Knot (which we’ll be showing a how-to tie video of this week) while the fluoro is still on the spool. Then he winds it through his rod guides until it reaches the feeder or butt guide, the last guide before his reel. The key is to keep the fluoro from going into your reel where it will slam against that first guide as you cast.
“If I can keep my knot from banging that first guide, I won’t have any issues with casting, knot strength or wind knots,” Hite said. “And that Alberto knot is the deal. It’s so small; you can’t even hear it going through your guides. And my line twist problems are gone on my drop shots with braid. So it’s really the best of all worlds.”
Take a lesson from the guys who have to be sure they capitalize on every way possible to hook and land all the fish that bite through the course of a day of bass fishing. Braid can give you added security in strength, castability, visibility, no stretch, good hooksets and more. Keep your pound tests to a reasonable strength and small diameter and you’ll enjoy a lot more bites and a lot less problems.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 @ 05:22 PM
Well we ran a piece today that mentioned the Stupid Rig for Tubes made famous by Terry McWilliams in a few BASS tournaments and the Classic several years ago. After that we had several people asking what a Stupid Rig was and what it looked like. We apologize as we thought more folks were familiar with the rig. As luck would have it we got a good illustration of the rig today.
The beauty of the Stupid Rig for a tube is that you can still get that spiral fall of a tube in a jighead but also get a weedless rigged tube. So it's the best of both worlds. But there is definitely an art to rigging it right.
Our buddy Nathan Gray at Secret Lures was kind enough to share the back of his Secret Lures Stupid Tube Jigheads. Here is a PDF of the Secret Lures Stupid Tube Illustration.
Nathan actually worked with Terry McWilliams to design the heads perfectly. That rig was used with another tube and jighead to win the Jet-a-Marina Classic two weeks ago on Kentucky Lake. Fact be known, the Stupid Rig on Tubes has won a lot of tournaments on Kentucky Lake and other lakes across the country. Read More
Posted by Jason Sealock on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
Todd Hollowell (left) and Troy Hollowell (right) hold up the winning bass
We talked about a week ago about the disappointment of chasing ghosts in fishing. Fishing where they were and not where they are so to speak. As promised we’re following up with the guys who figured the fish out in that same derby. And the lesson is not how they caught bass in this one day tournament but how they go about the approach to targeting bass in April and May when they are moving, changing and transitioning from one phase to another in the spring spawning cycle.
This time of year the fish can be very unpredictable. Big fish can seem to vanish for a period only to show up a few days later in inches of water. But several factors on Kentucky Lake the week of the Jet-A-Marina Classic led Troy and Todd Hollowell to the winning stringer of bass and an understanding of what the bass are doing this time of year given the conditions they were faced with.
Todd Hollowell is a touring pro on the FLW Tour and runs the Red Gold wrap on his boat. Troy has been fishing Kentucky Lake for a long time. The brothers get together every year to fish the Jet-A-Marina Classic which is one of the largest tournaments on the lake each year, with this event seeing more than 315 teams.
The lake warmed up a bunch in the weeks prior to April 7. In fact in some places the water was 75 degrees. Then a cold front came through and dropped the surface temperatures back into the mid 60s. The lake was slowly starting to rise from winter pool but not enough to put a lot of cover in the water. Then there was the clarity issue. The water on Kentucky Lake can typically be classified as stained, but this year anglers found it very clear.
Take those conditions and couple them with the days getting longer and you have fish heading for the shallows to spawn. Problem was spawning fish are looking for good clean hard bottoms. At that time the good clean hard bottoms were in 1 to 2 feet of water and that put a lot of small fish up. The fish on lakes like Kentucky that fluctuate know when the right stuff is in the right depth and will often wait a little longer for more harder bottoms to be in deeper water.
The Hollowells went with what they’ve been learning for the last 10 years on Kentucky Lake in this time frame. The bass are here one day and gone the next often.
“You catch a lot of fish this time of year that are on their way to somewhere else,” Todd Hollowell said. “They are there one day and then you go back the next day and they’re gone. It’s because they’re leaving one area to go towards where they intend to spawn. You literally find fish in all three phases. We found some fish out on the River. We found some fish in the mouths of the bays and half way back in the creeks and we found some fish all the way in the back of the pockets cruising and roaming.”
The Hollowells didn’t even get a check in the previous year’s Classic, but then turned around and won a boat in another tournament in the same month. They have learned a key ingredient is that you have to be willing to move around a lot and fish everything. You can’t just say I’m going dock fishing or I’m going ledge fishing. You have to be willing to fish out, to fish shallow to fish points to fish brush piles to fish everything and anything.
“I only got to put in a day and a half with Troy,” Todd said. “But we have learned a lot from another great stick on this lake who always seems to do well here in April and May – Craig Powers. He showed Troy a lot – things like using a wake bait and covering a lot of water.”
The Hollowells started out in the river and found a couple of good schools throwing the Castaic castable umbrella rig with Castaic Jerky J swimbaits on them. Then they went looking shallow after that.
“One of the biggest keys in the tournament for us was my sunglasses,” Todd Hollowell said. “I’ve been using the Gone Fishing Sunglasses and it’s my first year wearing them. But I saw a few fish in practice cruising the pockets that Troy didn’t see and that ended up being a key because we came back to those areas and caught some of the right fish to win the tournament.”
With limit schools found and a few places shallow where they thought some big bass were lurking, Troy and Todd had some confidence going into the tournament. But they still weren’t sure if they could get those couple of big bites you needed to win the tournament.
“We started out in the river where we found those schools and caught a bunch of bass and had a limit of 10-11 pounds early,” Todd said. “That enabled us to move around and hunt big fish. On the first stop we made shallow, Troy caught a 4 ½ pound bass on the wake bait. Then we jumped over to one of the pockets I’d seen some nice fish cruising and I catch back to back 6-pounders on a River Rat Tackle tube rigged in the Stupid Rig with a jighead that is Texas rigged like Terry McWilliams made famous here many moons ago.”
Hollowell normally fishes a jig in those pockets, but because the water was so clear, he opted for a natural green pumpkin tube to catch those big bass.
They went back out deep for a while seeing if they could find another good fish in those big schools out on the river. Finally with just a little time left they ran back in and Troy catches another 4-pounder on a dock with a shaky head on his very last cast. That got them up to about 23 pounds and what ultimately would be the winning limit of bass.
The keys to their success came from a lot of springs on the lake. What they’ve learned is that first wave of bass that move up shallow when the water is clear on an otherwise stained fishery is the bass are spooky and skittish. Your same big baits might not be the ticket. The tube becomes more effective than the jig. A quiet waking bait becomes more effective than a loud splashing topwater.
And knowing the fish are moving and changing and you have to be open to change and fish a lot of different ways in the course of a day.
“Don’t be afraid to change and fish a lot of different ways,” Hollowell said. “This was a team tournament and in a team tournament there really is never a need for you both to be doing the same thing. So Todd would fish up high in the water column and I’d fish closer to the bottom. We can cover so much more water like that. We weighed fish on a tube, shaky head, wake bait and more. The clear water affects them. The water levels affect them. So you have a lot to consider when fishing for bass that are prespawn, spawn and post spawn. Hartwell and Table Rock were both fishing this same way on the FLW Tour, so I think those two events really mentally prepared me for this tournament on Kentucky Lake.”
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 16, 2012 @ 02:21 PM
We get a lot of product to test and evaluate here at Wired2Fish. We’ve gotten several pairs of sunglasses over the last few months and three of those shades we thought we ought to show anglers because each is very different and each has its perks for consideration. Obviously price is a factor with any purchase, but sunglasses are an investment purchase more than a consumable purchase when it comes to your fishing tackle.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Wed, Apr 11, 2012 @ 12:01 AM
“Caught 'em here yesterday.”
“They were biting Sunday.”
“You should have been here last week.”
We’ve all heard this statement. I can tell you from a media standpoint, I hear this nearly every time I go to fish with someone on a different lake or to shoot photos and videos with anglers on their home waters. The chase drives us but it’s those small windows of opportunity where we really bust the bass that lures us in as avid anglers.
The appeal in fishing might simply be summed up as the allure of fooling a fish of size and proportion as to merit esteem for outwitting such an experienced quarry. Catching unconditioned and unpressured, i.e. younger, smaller bass doesn’t require near the skill that it does to catch a bass of some size and age that has seen, fell for and been conditioned to various lures and techniques.
That said when you thrust yourself into fishing competition, it’s generally the guy that can catch the older, wiser bass that does well. So how does one acquire the knowledge to catch the older, wiser bass and not just the younger, impulsive bass? Well reading as much as you can from other successful anglers is a good start. Spending time on the water learning from the big catches obviously helps more than most practices. And more importantly learning from “not catching” them, or as I sometimes call them, fishing ghosts.
I spent a few afternoons last week preparing for the one tournament a year I really “prepare for” around home on Kentucky Lake – the Jet-A-Marina Classic. This tournament sees some 300 boats every year, 600 anglers and a good portion of some of the best anglers on the lake, my southern friends generally excluded as most won’t venture up this way to fish.
I always look forward to this tournament and practicing because my good friend Brian Wilson, owner of Cumberland Pro Lures comes over and fishes a couple days with me to practice and then fishes the tournament with me. It's usually the only days Brian and I get on the water together each year. So I always enjoy hanging out and talking fishing and life with a friend.
But there are Elite Series and FLW Tour pros, Everstart, Bassmaster Open, and BFL champions, guides and more fishing in this tournament. So if you can get on the same page as the fish on this one day, you can puff out your chest a little. Not a lot because after all, winning a bass fishing tournament doesn’t mean you’re the best angler on the lake. It simply means for that day, you figured the better five bass out that day. That being said, I would have liked to been a Hollowell brother this weekend.
Troy and Todd Hollowell wowed the crowd with a 23-pound limit and their biggest bass wasn’t even 6 pounds. That means every bass in their limit was a nice one. Now take much of the rest of the more than 300 boat field. There were 137 limits of bass between 10 and 15 pounds with several more above and below those marks. I talked with Terry Bolton after the tournament, and I think he summed up the fishing best.
“If you caught a 4-pounder, you got a check,” he said. “If you caught two 4-pounders you were in the top 20. If you caught three 4-pounders or better fish you were in the hunt and if you caught four 4-pounders and a kicker fish, you were the Hollowells.”
The fishing by most standards was good but not great. Lots of 2-3 pound males cooperated with anglers, but the 4-pound or better bass were pretty hard to come by.
I had been catching some of those magical 4-pound-plus fish the last few weeks and therein lies the point where I started chasing ghosts. Instead of locking down in what was our best area and upgrading to say 16-17 pounds, I took my early limit of 13 pounds and started chasing ghosts all over the lake.
The result was a whopping 4-ounce upgrade. I kept cycling through areas where I had taken big bass weeks ago, chasing ghosts left behind by the bass that had moved to new areas. The bass have had a very odd year to deal with, but it’s probably odder to us than the bass. When it’s all said and done, they are still going to go through the same transitions they always do from prespawn to post spawn.
The bass are changing daily in some areas and not at all in other parts of the lake. The water is rising, the temperatures, however, have been declining and not a lot of folks have noticed that. I had noticed and found a few patterns by backing off the banks, focusing on transition areas and working baits more slowly and methodically to get bites.
However, I never got that clue in the right areas. I practiced in some of the areas I heard the top-five teams fished. That’s how it goes sometimes. Sometimes you get the bass and sometimes you don’t. But every time you don’t you should make an effort to understand what you missed and file into the memory banks.
What I missed was the bass in the best creek I found in the last week were there but they were moving slightly and behaving a lot differently because they are about to start bedding. I’ve enjoyed a little sight fishing the last week or two on Kentucky and Barkley Lakes, but I realized the only fish that were up spawning were the little guys. That’s because this lake has summer and winter pools. It creates a unique phenomenon that happen on a lot of lakes with winter draw downs that not many folks realize that I’m going to share. Because after all I’m not a tournament angler; I’m someone dedicated to helping others understand and improve their odds in fishing.
What happens a lot on lakes with summer and winter draw downs are the bass become not only conditioned to length of days and water temperatures but what parts of the bottom are in certain depths at certain times around the spawn.
What I’ve noticed as I’ve studied different bedding areas on the lake is that the best hard, gravel bottoms are in 1 to 2 feet of water if not on dry land all together. A big bass doesn’t want to be up that shallow on a fluctuating fishery. So they wait for those same areas to be covered with another 3-5 feet of water. The reason is the sections just behind these prime hard bottoms, further out into a bay or pocket are actually much softer bottoms and less conducive to spawning. So rather than sliding out deeper the fish are forced to wait as the water slides up the bank.
What I realized was happening late in my tournament day was the bass that had been staging in areas in deeper water in the bays had been progressively “sliding up” towards the bedding areas but stopping well short of them. In essence you sat in deeper water, threw to shallower water and worked your baits back a long ways to the boat to move through the transition zones that many of the bigger bass I suspect are held up in waiting on the water to rise.
Late in the day I returned to my starting area after striking out on literally 10 other stops. Within minutes I was catching keepers again and continued working from my primary areas toward the spawning flats. In between, in this mid-depth transition zone, I caught a 3-pounder. And I had one of those “I’m an idiot” moments.
Was I on 23 pounds to win the tournament? Absolutely not! I don’t think, anyhow. Probably not.
But I had committed a cardinal sin in bass fishing: “Never leave biting fish.”
I had a starting area that was so good, I nearly had my limit before the armada of boats was done launching in the distance. I could hear boats continually racing past me in the distance as I boated keeper 3 and keeper 4. I finally got to cull at 8 a.m. Culled and culled, each time having to use a balance beam as I had a few of those “go-with” fish in the well. For those that don’t know, a go-with fish is one that goes with three 5 pounders, nicely.
I finally got anxious and starting running all over the lake looking for 5-pounders that were long gone. Where I could have just hunkered down and found those 3 and 4 pounders I was catching just days before while practicing in my primary area.
So I learned a painful, gut-punch lesson. A little more time in a good area would have yielded a good check, of that I’m sure. Instead I was haunted by big bass and memories of what was 3 weeks ago and not what was now. We didn’t fish in the moment and it cost me a check. We didn’t connect the dots and I finished in the bottom of the top third in the field. We didn’t have a top-20 finish like the last 2 years because I didn’t fish the conditions and the changes on tournament day like we had done so well the past two years.
But it’s good. It will help my fishing.
My dad whipped me a few good times as a kid. Good enough that I still remember them like it happened last night and not 35 years ago. Good enough that I feel like I’m getting whooped again when I’m scolding my own son for something. Those whoopings are part of who I am today. Sometimes we got to take a whooping to be the better person for it on the other side.
So my ghosts took me to the wood shed this weekend, so did a couple of Hollowell brothers. But that’s all right. Because my fishing will improve as a result.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Mon, Apr 09, 2012 @ 12:58 PM
By Shaye Baker
Florida bass fishing can be some of the best in the country no matter what time of year you hit the water. With mild to scorching hot temperatures year round the bass never get cold in Florida, so they never stop growing. Arguably the best time to head south however is on or around the spawn. Large females move in to the shallow weedy waters of lakes like Lake Okeechobee to feed up, lay their eggs and then feed heavily again before returning to open water or burying up in thick vegetation.
The tail end of the spawn is one of the most exciting times to bass fish in Florida. It seems that there are hundreds of bass per acre fresh out of the spawn and no longer preoccupied with furthering the species along. Once the females lay their eggs, they don’t wait around for room service. Instead they hop out of bed and get on the prowl for whatever they can find. This presents a perfect opportunity to peruse the shallows with reaction baits and load the boat.
The aggressive males hang around and guard the new hatchlings, or fry. Their innate protective nature tells them to protect their offspring at all cost. So as they work to keep bluegill and other predators away they make themselves susceptible to almost anything that looks like it could eat one of their young. This is where the avid angler comes in again with the reaction baits and takes advantage of Mother Nature’s bounty.
These Florida tricks can work on other grassy lakes in the Midwest and northern parts of the country as well when bass are around the spawn.
One such angler who has been targeting these post-spawn feeders for years is Mercury pro John Cox. He has used tricks that he learned from an early age to catch fish all over Florida as well as similar lakes across the country. His most recent accomplishment came while swimming a jig to finish second in the Walmart FLW Tour Open on Lake Okeechobee in February of 2012.
While most anglers were flipping for fish buried in thick matted vegetation, Cox was able to swim a jig in sparser weeds to bring in nearly 20 pounds a day and inevitably finish runner-up.
The swim jig Cox uses is made by Rattle Head Baits. Cox typically trails his jig with a Skinny Dipper style bait, one that has become synonymous with grass fishing, especially on Florida lakes. Depending on the depth of the water and the thickness of the vegetation, Cox will vary the size of his swim jig from 1/8 to 3/8 ounce and typically go with a darker color to imitate a bream after the spawn.
Fry usually hang pretty close to some sort of cover for protection, so Cox likes to throw at targets. He’ll pick apart an area clump by clump and is always sure to parallel whatever vegetation that he can to get the most out of each cast.
Another bait that is a must have for these type situations in a Zoom Speed Worm. This is also a staple in most Floridians arsenals during the post spawn months. Cox adds a small tungsten weight to the nose of the Speed Worm and then Texas-rigs the bait, making it is weedless.
This more subtle bait offers a nice alternative for some of the moody Florida fish that have not completely progressed out of the post-spawn funk that most fish go through shortly after spawning. Rigging the worm with a small weight helps submerse the bait, allowing it to be fished a little quicker and also greatly improves the baits castability.
Don’t let the small stature of the speed worm fool you. Like many Floridians, Cox has hauled in some giant bass on the little worm. Although he doesn’t like to downsize, he knows it’s a must at times to get the big girls to bite. Green pumpkin, junebug and black and blue are all great colors in the Speed Worm which comes in two sizes.
While Cox meanders through the spawning grounds he is also always on the lookout for a late spawner that he might be able to double back on. Often times, bass in the grassy, shallow reservoirs in Florida will bed offshore to the point where landmarks become non-existent. With no visual reference points it becomes difficult to triangulate and locate the fish on the next pass.
While GPS waypoints on Cox’s Lowrance unit are a big help in getting him back to the general area where he spotted a bedding bass, he needs a little more to hone in on exactly which one of the numerous beds on a spawning flat actually held the big bass.
This is one reason Cox keeps a push-pole in the boat at all times. The obvious advantage is using the push-pole to sneak up on weary spawners during the height of the spawn. However, towards the tail end of the spawn Cox will typically use his trolling motor as his primary mode of transportation in the shallows and the push-pole takes on another purpose.
If Cox happens to stumble up on a bedding bass that he wants to return to, he will take his push-pole and jab it down into the ground near the fish’s bed. There are a few disadvantages to this approach, one being that he can’t venture too far away since he runs the risk of someone making off with his push-pole or someone cracking the code and using his marker to find his newly acquired fish.
Cox’s solution to this is simple. If he is in a high pressure situation or perhaps the ground is just too hard for him to get the push-pole to stand up, he has a few pre-rigged bobbers attached to a short piece of fishing line with a weight on the end. He’ll use these to mark fish and then let them settle back down. When he returns, he is able to get the exact position he needs and has the best shot at extracting the fish.
Using little tricks to help himself get a step ahead of the competition has put John Cox on the national fishing radar and has jump started his young career. Company that with the patience that only a Florida fisherman can inherently exude and Cox has a fairly fool proof guide to shallow grass, post-spawn bass fishing.
Using reaction baits to cover water and trigger strikes is always a fun and fast way to catch big stringers during the post spawn if the fish are biting. But don’t be fooled if for some reason they want strike or commit to your bigger baits. The big ones are likely there, and if they are, they can definitely be caught. Just slow down, and you’ll be fishing like a Florida pro before you know it, catching big ones and beaming big smiles.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Fri, Apr 06, 2012 @ 06:00 AM
Certain things in life are just better done slowly. Things like cooking a steak, enjoying a fine wine or sitting on the front porch in the rocky chair with a glass of iced tea on a spring sunset out by the lake. The same goes for fishing I suppose. A Texas-rigged worm generally needs to contact the bottom, and that often requires a slow deliberate retrieve. A jig is much the same.
But fishing baits that generally need some sort of bottom contact doesn’t have to be a painfully slow approach to finding fish, especially ones that seem reluctant to run down “chase me” baits like a crankbait or a spinnerbait. While practicing for a tournament recently, we figured out that slow baits can actually be fished slow but fast.
Confused yet? This won’t be one of those tales of the goofy but lovable tortoise beating the cocky, annoying rabbit. Making a jig and worm keep contact with the cover and bottom while breezing through large areas quickly looking for active fish does require careful attention and some forethought. It can, however, be extremely effective for finding fish fast and knowing if an area holds concentrations of fish.
The jig is an incredibly versatile lure. It can be hopped, drug, swam, stroked, shook and more, all of which will trigger bass to bite at different times. But day in and day out, just dragging it around cover and on hard bottoms can produce lots of good quality bites on various fisheries all over the country.
Likewise a Texas-rigged plastic can also do a lot. But many folks tend not to throw them when they are trying to find fish fast because they feel they have to slow down too much. There are certain instances where other baits will be a lot easier to fish fast, but a jig and a worm can really let you know if fish are in an area whether the bite is tough or wide open.
Some key ingredients to fishing these typically slow baits fast can be boat position and cover.
Obviously when you’re working an area and you’re not sure where the bass are yet, you’re going to have to work everything. That means the shallow flats, the rocky points, the steep banks, and any available cover you can see. But the first thing to mind is boat position. If you know the water temperature is at a level where the fish can be comfortable shallow. You might not have to work the lure out to 20 feet. You can position the boat closer on a steeper bank, and run down the bank quickly making short pitches, dragging the bait a little, shaking it a little and then pitching again.
On a long flat, you can random cast, pulling it along, stopping it occasionally and then moving again. But you don’t have to sit and painfully work the area because you’re looking for one aggressive fish to tell you there are fish in the area. Until that one fish keys you into the fact that you’re around the bass, there is no reason to put on the brakes.
Available cover can speed the process up even more. If you’re fishing down a bank that has grass, you work the bait through the grass to the end and then pull up and go again. Or maybe you make precise pitches to openings in the grass in various places throughout your area. If there are laydowns, you can quickly target them with short pitches with the jig or Texas Rig. Shake it a little, pull it a little and then on to the next piece of cover.
Many fishermen are guilty of fishing too slow in areas that don’t have any bass. You’re working it slow, being methodical because you don’t want to miss anything. Yet you forgot one of the common generalities in fishing – 90 percent of the bass are in 10 percent of the water. That may make fishing seem impossible to some, but it’s really meant to make fishing a lot more simple. It basically means fish fast in likely areas and if you’re not getting bit, get moving. You want to blow through the 90 percent to find that 10 percent.
While practicing for a tournament this week, I was guilty of slowing down in unproductive areas, until I got a few bites pretty close together. When that happened I actually sped up. This was the reverse of what I should be doing. But in practice, I want to know two things. Does this area hold a population of fish? Are they keepers? One bite in an area doesn’t make it a great place. One quality bite from a solid keeper can, but not a short fish on one isolated piece of cover.
It’s not enough to just get a few bites. You have to extrapolate from that whether you could catch more if you slowed down. In practice, I tested my theory by actually speeding up and fishing fast after getting some bites. You know what? I got a lot more bites because I realized some important facts. It’s spring. The water is warm, the fish want to move shallow, and they will eat if you put it in front of them. So the faster you fish, the more fish you have a chance to put a bait in front of them.
As you hone in on your areas, you can really work through them quickly to know that a population is present without beating the area up too bad either. Usually when I take a quality bite, I will leave an area and try to duplicate it or replicate it in other areas on the lake. We were able to do that in practice by fishing contact baits quickly out to the depth range we found the fish active in other areas and quickly establish a few areas where fish were present and active.
Many bass fishing tournaments are won in areas after just one bite in practice. The angler fished through an area fast, took a quality bite, decided the area offered a lot of room for a population of fish and they left. Then in the tournament, they came back and really slowed down and fished methodically in the area because they knew bass were present.
Fish fast with contact baits when the bass won’t chase reaction baits. Then when the bites start, see if you can get a few more fish to bite by fishing quickly through it, targeting specific things in the area like structure, cover, water clarity changes, baitfish, current and other factors. If you breeze through an area and take a few quality bites, chances are you’ve found an area that will payoff with a slower methodical approach.
Don’t be afraid to throw a small jig or Texas rig when you’re searching for bass quickly. You’ll often find fish that we’re apt to chase baits and can stumble into some fine bass fishing this time of year as a result.
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Posted by Jason Sealock on Wed, Apr 04, 2012 @ 08:00 AM
The sun sweltered anglers in the blistering rays. The lack of wind and clouds oppressed the skin and angling spirit even more. The doldrums of many casts and few bites lead to doubt, indecisiveness, constant changes and adaptations with little success. Sounds like the summer doldrums, but it was the end of March in the Midwest.
The bite on many lakes and rivers across the country has been feast or famine over the course of the last month. An unusual heat wave has spread throughout much of the country. Lakes that normally see 50 and 60 degree water temperatures have seen 60 and 70 degree temperature ranges. Some of the lakes in the south have already breached the 80 degree mark.
The fishing has gone from great one day to fishing in a ghost town the next day. So what’s going on? The weather is moving the bass too rapidly some have hypothesized. But I have another theory. Maybe we’re just ahead of the fish. It is after all April and not July. The fish have been on the same routines for years, and especially on lakes that fluctuate, there can be other factors more important than water temperature to move fish into predictable places.
I’ll give you an example. The water was 74 degrees on the lake I fish the other day. Normally it’s barely 60 degrees this time of year, nearly 15 degrees ahead of the curve. I assumed the fish have since made a mass exodus to the banks and gone shallow. However the lake is just a little more than a foot over summer pool. It has another 3 ½ feet to go before it gets where the fish like it and lots of cover enters the lake for shallow fish to relate.
The moon phase also is not quite there for them to be up there spawning. But it’s getting close. So over the last week I have seen fish spawning. But they are small fish. Why? Everyone always says the big fish spawn first. That might be true under perfectly typical conditions. But throw in the wrinkle that says the right kinds of bottom substrate are not in the depth they want to spawn and now you’ve got a situation where the water is warm enough but the locations are not right for the bass to pull up there. Not to mention bass are keenly aware of length of days and moon phases and their biological clocks work on those timers as well as water temperatures.
I spent one whole day going shallow this weekend, from mere inches of water out to 6-10 feet. I caught some fish but not like I thought I should have caught. I got off the water that day and was really beating myself up about not catching the fish better. I had caught so many fish off beds prior to that on other lakes and locations down lake last weekend. I just figured I should have found them better with that warm water up shallow.
I threw more than 15 different baits and techniques at the fish. Like I said I caught some fish, a small limit that didn't weigh much. But it was such painful and hard fishing I felt like I was missing the boat for sure. I spent a lot of time looking for bedding fish with a good pair of polarized sunglasses. I tried crankbaits and Carolina rigs. I threw Texas-rigged plastics, spinnerbaits and chatterbaits around shallow cover. I threw big baits and little baits, and nothing seemed to matter.
The same thing happened at the FLW Tour on Table Rock. Everyone saw bass on beds and assumed all the fish were up spawning because of the unseasonably warm weather, but in the end, it was those staging fish waiting for the right time to move up that proved to be what much of the top 10 anglers were targetting.
So I rethought my whole approach. What I’m learning is the fish need multiple variables to line up for them to run to the banks, or swim as the case may be. Just because it’s warm and we think they should be up there, doesn’t mean they are. So you move back out to the main lake and start your search all over again. That’s what I call being ahead of the fishing curve. I went to where I thought the bass should be, instead of starting where they were last and working from there.
Obviously, if you don’t fish a lot with consistency it’s hard to know where the fish were or are at any given point in the year. But the spring is a rapidly progressive transition for the bass. They are out on the main lake, then move to secondary structure in bays in creeks, then up shallow in the pockets and flats, then they begin working back out, stopping along familiar secondary areas and shallow cover laden areas until the finally reach their summer destinations back out deeper yet. Sometimes, this all happens in a month. Sometimes, it seems like it takes several months depending on factors like water clarity, water levels and water temperature.
We can also be ahead of the baitfish. I still find that understanding baitfish migrations is the last great bastion of understanding in bass fishing. When we fully understand where and when a crawfish, shad, smelt, hitch or other thing a bass likes to eat moves and changes, we’ll be able to better predict where bass will move to next. Follow the bait and you’ll be on the same path as the bass.
I was talking to a friend who is an accomplished angler down south, winning many tournaments on lakes near his home. He chuckled about how everyone is so upset about the fish not being where everyone thinks they should be because of the warm weather, clear but low water levels and summed it up best:
“This time next year, the lakes will probably be 5 feet high, and the water will be cold and colored. We’ll all be complaining that the bite is so bad because of the exact opposite conditions we have now.”
Think a few steps ahead of the bass, but don’t beat them to the punch. Trust me I was there last week. It was awfully lonely without many bass to keep me company. It wasn’t until one evening this week when it all clicked and I caught back up with my greenback friends by going to where I last found them and then working towards where I think they’ll be next.
Once I figured out where they were holding, I ran a lot of water quickly and we caught bass on every stop. From there it’s just fine tuning your presentations to get the best bites and the most fish from each area you find.
Isn’t it funny how we over think this fishing game sometimes?
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