by Bruce Middleton, July 04, 2006
And how to be a generalist to solve the problem…
Mike Carey the owner and Editor and Chief of washingtonlakes.com and I went fishing on American lake on the first day of May this year. We started at the south end called Little American and then later moved out into the main lake to scour the islands that dot the lake. We didn’t have much luck and went away with only one good strike to our credit. But this is not what this article is about, it is about all the things I did wrong while fishing for early pre-spawn bass on a lake I’ve never fished before.
Now it may seem odd to some that since I live in Kitsap county and American lake is only 33 miles from the backdoor of my house that I have never fished it. Well that is because of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I hate the traffic and almost always seem to be going the wrong way on it when there is an accident, and that is just about daily on that stretch of highway. That May Day was no exception.
We had planned to start fishing at about 7:30 A.M. but one thing and other added up to our starting about 8:30. So off we went to Little American and dropped the trolling motor. I looked at the depth gage and was shocked to find that despite being only 20 yard from the band the water depth was 55 feet deep. So I quickly changed Jigs to a ¾ ounce black and blue with a brown craw trailer and started fishing. The slope of the lake must have been steel because the jig hit bottom in no time. After fishing for several hundred yards, Mike asked me how deep the water was and I replied 55 feet. He looked puzzled and looked for himself and said, no that was the temperature and we were only in 25 feet of water. I looked closer and sure enough he was right. You see the display on my depth sounder is different than Mike’s and the depth and temperature displays were reversed. A simple mistake but one that made me fish with too heavy a jig. Mistake number one.
I also wasn’t watching the depth sounder like I usually do so I had no idea if any baitfish or bass were showing up on the screen. Mistake number two. Always watch the sounder for baitfish and any irregularities in the bottom.
After trying the jig I switched to a favorite perch colored spinner bait and worked it as slowly as possible from shore to the boat but still had no luck, so after a while we moved out into the main lake and trolled around the first island we came to. There were not a lot of docks but the bottom was fairly clean with new growth only about a half foot tall. Again I started out with a jig and pig, lighter this time and intermixed it with the spinner bait and suspending long crank bait. I got snagged in the brush once and had to go in and retrieve it because I didn’t get my hand over the bail of the reel fast enough to slow the lure down. Mistake number three. Always control your casting length when in close to the bank.
This island proved empty for us so we moved out and headed for the next island. Half way there were a set of markers showing a rock pile formation to be aware of during low water conditions. We slowed down a bit and baitfish filled the sounder, so we decided to give this place a try. I started out with suspending crank bait and on the first cast had six or eight really large perch follow it up to the boat. Well this was encouraging. Baitfish! The bass should be near, 12 to 15 feet of water, which should be just right for this time of year, it just seemed like a great spot.
On the third or fourth cast my lure went sailing 15 yards farther than it normally does with the amount of effort I put into it. Cause, the knot gave out. Mistake number four. Always check to ensure your knots are tied correctly and give them a tug test to make sure. Well I hadn’t and it failed. I was glad a bass hadn’t hit or else I would have lost him and a good lure. I got it back and retied. We continued fishing this spot for a long time using just about every lure and bait in the box with no luck at all, so we finally decided to move on. The next island had a lot more docks and better wood but didn’t prove to be any better at getting any bites.
Finally we moved more out into the center/edge of the lake looking for deeper bass. By this time I had tied on my half and half. It is unique crank bait I found that someone took the front treble hook off and replaced it with a weed guard. The back treble hook is replaced with a spinner bait skirt and hook. It is a very unusual lure with a wide slow wobble. About twenty minutes later I got a strike on it. Bang and I pulled back on the rod. Mistake number five, I didn’t set the hook, and I just pulled back on the rod. The bass jerked around for a few seconds and was gone. I had gotten complacent and wasn’t ready for a strike, and so when I did get one I goofed it up. Always be ready for a strike and be ready to set the hook. I had one good bite in five hours and let it slip through my fingers. What a waste.
So there you have it, all the things I did wrong on an early spring fishing trip. Five major mistakes that cost me one fish and probably one or two more buy using too heavy a jig and not checking my knots.
What I did learn on this fishing trip was worth going to American lake though. I found a really great place to fish for perch, which I like a lot (they are great smoked too). I fished a new lake and now know where the ramp is and how big the lake is and that it has both large and small mouth bass in it. And I spent a day with a very good friend who enjoys fishing as much as I do.
Was it a wasted trip? Not in the least. I’ll fish bass at the drop of the hat and this trip was no exception. I learned a lot, as usual, and I had a great time on the lake. There a few mistakes I’ll not be making the rest of this year and I’ll get to do a little more research on pre-spawn bass and what you can do to entice them to bite.
This leads into a short story below about how to fish on a lake like I just told you about. It’s a good story but short and it has a lot of relevance to Mike’s and my fishing trip.
BE A GENERALIST WHEN YOU FIRST START FISHING
Never start fishing in a set pattern and expect it to be the only way to fish. When you go out on a lake, whether it’s in the spring for the first time after a long winter off, or just a week since you were just out, you have a lot of ideas in your head about what to do and how you want to fish the lake. It’s best to be a generalist when first starting out and not get stuck in same old patterns trip after trip.
Being a generalist enables you to try many different approaches to a variety of lake areas on any given lake or situation on that lake. You can then start to narrow down your choices and start to specialize the styles and techniques that work to win you more and bigger bass. Specialization comes with refining any technique to a point to where you are just fine tuning small points to get the most out of your presentation.
How many ways do you know how to rig a worm or other plastic bait? How many different types if crank baits do you have in your tackle box? How about jigs, spinner baits and buzz baits? Do you have any jig heads, or the pieces to make a drop shot rig or a split shot rig? What about top water lures? These are just the major categories of baits and lures. What about color? Do you know the time when a black worm is best or when a white willow leaf blade with a white skirt is best?
The simple act of looking at the sky just before you launch the boat can tell more about how your going to fish that day than any other factor. If it’s a cloudy day you know that spinner baits, top water lures, buzz baits and shallow running crank baits can be used all day long with great success. If it’s a sunny day, the bass will be deeper and the use of jigs, plastics, deep diving crank baits and possibly drop shotting will be the best way to catch bass. You can learn so much by just looking up.
Water temperature is the next biggest clue as to how to fish for bass. Cold water, say 60 degrees and below is considered cold-water conditions. This requires an ultra slow presentation, as the bass are extremely lethargic. They will most likely have a very tight strike zone and won’t chase any lure. This means you will have to drop a bait right down in front of their nose and keep it there while they decide whether or not to bite it. The best baits at this time are jigs and pigs (pork or plastic), very slow-rolled spinner baits, and some plastic baits. Never use a crawfish at this time as it is unnatural bait and the bass know it. Crawfish hibernate in winter’s cold water.
Water temperatures that are between 60 and 70 in the spring are spawning times and plastics of all kinds works now as well as spinner baits, buzz baits and lipless crank baits. In the fall when the temperatures drop to this level, you can throw just about anything in the tackle box. The bass are starting to eat frantically in preparation for winter and they will strike just about anything. This is the time when the biggest bass of the year are caught.
70 degrees and above are summer temperatures and ring in the hardest times of the year to catch bass. They have spread out to their summer homes and many of them are in deep cover with lots of shade to protect their lidless eyes from the sun. Bass are typically found from the shoreline to 30 feet of water depending on cover, vegetation and feed. This is also the time when bass move the most, feeding in the shallows at dusk and dawn and moving deeper during the heat of the day. One thing to note however, bass like humans prefer 71 degrees as the optimal temperature to live in.
Water color is the next major determining factor. Clear water, usually associated with spring, gives bass the greatest advantage in that they can see the farthest distances in. Studies show that a bass in clear water can see up to 85 feet where a human wearing a facemask can see only 35 feet. In dingy water we can see 8 feet but a bass can see 40 feet and in muddy water where we can see 6 inches a bass can see 8 feet.
A bass’s eyes can see and distinguish many colors and hues of green, red, orange, black and brown. They have keen enough eyesight to see fishing line and hooks. This is one reason that Fluorocarbon lines are so popular. They are small and they turn invisible in the water, even to a bass. The use of colored hooks, black and red, and using the smallest hooks possible eliminates the shine of older silver hooks glaring and flashing where they aren’t wanted.
Ok, so now you understand some of the nuances of the lake, weather, water and the options you have to get started with, so what do you really start with once you drop the trolling motor and begin idling up the shoreline. Well for starters you don’t ever fish by keeping the same distance from the shoreline the whole way around the lake. You start by picking a depth, say 20 feet and following your depth finder, keep the boat at that depth the whole way around the lake. Keeping the boat say, 40 feet from shore is probably the single biggest mistake recreational bass anglers make. Never ever do that. Always follow a depth line. Why? Because you will find drop offs, shelves and other features this way that hold more bass that you ever thought possible. I t will train you to keep a constant eye on you depth/fish finder to and this is a real tool you need to teach yourself how to use. By running at a given depth and looking at the finder all the time you will see the bottom, the bass, you will note where the last bass came from and how deep he was. What kind of structure he was holding to and whole lot more. This is key, if you can follow a given depth around a lake, I’ll bet you become a better bass angler in one day than if you took professional lessons for a week.
Ok, now you’re trolling at the 15 or 20-depth level. Now most professional bass fisherman will tell you to start with a crank bait or a spinner bait to begin your search for active bass and once found you can slow down and fish them more intently with plastics or jigs. On the surface this is pretty sound advice but you have remember that these pro’s fish huge bodies of water like Lake Fork, Okeechobee and Rayburn as well as some of the biggest river impounds on the Tennessee River, the Ohio and others. These places are massive with tens of thousands of acres of water to choose from. Most of our fishing is done on lakes 400 acres or less and mostly less. While fan casting crank baits and spinners is a good way to catch bass and to locate them and determine their activity levels, on lakes less than 200 acres there is just too little area to start out this way. Now don’t get wrong, these methods work dang well almost all year round and you can use them anytime, its just not always the best way to locate fish on a small lake.
Small lakes offer a limited amount of areas that have grass beds, lily pads, undeveloped water fronts where brush piles are located, just so many docks and so on. In this situation the best choice is start with your strong point or by using the lures you have the most confidence in. If your strengths lie in fishing docks with a tube or worm, this is where you should start. If your favorite all time, never loose lure is a Rapala floating minnow, by all means set your depth and start casting it and work your way around the lake. Long minnow shaped lures are easy for bass to swallow. When using a suspending one, make sure to vary the retrieve until you find what it is the bass want then fish them hard using that approach. If after an hour or two has passed and nothing has happened and you have kept your depth and have seen no significant structure of fish on the finder, then its time to change one, two or three things. One, you could change the lure your using. This includes the size, shape and color if not an entire change to a completely different lure. Two, you could change locations to a different part of the lake, say the other side of move from the south end to the north end. Three, you could change your depth to a deeper setting by 5 or even 10 feet. Or if you’re feeling really radical you could do all three.
Once you catch a bass the first thing you should do after setting the hook is to look at the depth finder. See if there is any under water structure that the bass was in, how deep was he? This is information you need to store away for later use. Once the bass is landed look closely at how he is hooked. If the lure of bait is deep in the bass’s mouth it means that he was very aggressive and liked everything about the bait and the presentation. If he was lip hooked, it may indicate that while everything worked well, you still can fine-tune it to do better. And if the bass is hooked just barely by the back hook it is a clear sign that you do need to fine tune the bait or presentation in order to catch more and bigger bass.
Jigs are a great way to explore areas of heavy cover whether that cover is vegetation of brush. When jig fishing it’s important to have the jig fall straight down. You do this by casting it out and letting the jig freefall but letting the line slide through your fingertips so you are always in contact with the lure. Since 70% of all strikes happen on the fall, you must remain in contact with the jig during the fall. You do not, however, cast the jig out and in gage the reel so no more line can come off. This causes the jig to pendulum down in a long arc. Yes, it’s easier to keep in contact with the jig this way but it is an unnatural look and you are very likely to get far less bites.
A good jig has a smooth transition line from the eye of the hook, through the bottom of the lead head and to the shank of the hook. This means that everything is in a smooth uninterrupted line and the tip of the hook points upwards when at rest. When this configuration is met and the hook is set on a bass, the transition of the line pull is aimed directly at the hooks tip, for the smoothest and fastest hook-set. If the transition line is not straight and you set the hook, the jig can twist and you can rotate the jig and hook out of the bass’s mouth right between his lips. This straight transition line is also an aide when it comes to pulling your jig over cover. With a straight transition line the jig is more likely to pull over the cover quickly and easily whereas the non-straight one will twist and hang-up almost every time. Add bulk to a jig in warm water to make it look larger and to fall slower. In muddy water use blacks and purple colors, in clear water or water that has no color use light green colors and soft browns. Multiple strand vinyl, metal flake strands with many colors of greens are best and a little chartreuse is good too.
Top water lures and buzz baits are best used very early in the morning and in the evenings. They are tools best used in low light levels, but they can be used on cloudy days all day long. Any breeze is an addition help when top watering too. The ripple on the water refracts the light, which makes bass feel safer. Bass must be very active to take a top water lure though. This is because of the added factor of air. Bass don’t really like to take in a lot of air when they strike a bait. One other contrary fact about top water lures and buzz baits is that the biggest bass of the day are take on these lure between noon and 4 P.M. just why that is, nobody knows for sure! One other thing, frog lures in and around lily pads and reeds work all day long. The only thing you have to do is make the frog look real. You do this by swimming it with short one-inch twitches with the rod tip. When a bass comes up and grabs it. Reel down quickly and set the hook. You usually have lots of time to set the hook so don’t be in a hurry to do so or you will goof up the hook set and not set it hard enough. This will cause you to lose the bass every time.
Spinner baits like top waters, work best on cloudy days. The one thing that most anglers don’t understand about spinner baits is that they are not made to go as fast as you can reel them. Almost all amateur bass anglers fish spinners way too fast. Done correctly, they are retrieved just fast enough to make the blade(s) spin and no faster. Yes there are times when you can bulge a spinner so it runs just under the surface but that is a trick used by the pro’s and little understood and used correctly by am amateurs. The best all around spinner baits are one that has a Nickel Colorado blade and a black skirt and one with a white skirt. The skirt should have about 80 strands to them and a few (3-6) red ones can help your strike percentage. Also, a trailer hook is a MUST on all buzz and spinner baits. If you find you simply can’t cast one with out getting hung up every cast then it’s time to change to a different bait.
Scent is such an important part of bass fish to day. There are many, many different types of scents out on the market today. By far, the number one scent attractant is anise (pronounced an-niece) extract. It smells like black licorice. Mixed with petroleum jelly it is sold under the brand name ‘Megastrike™’. In this form it adheres to every thing and lasts 20 times longer that if it were applied in a liquid form. Bass love the smell and you don’t smell like live crushed crawfish with a minnow gravy at the end of the day.
Never tie yourself down to any given way to fish a lake. Keep an open mind, use you depth finder to its fullest and always experiment when you get a chance. Never get into a rut.
Bruce Middleton
bpmiddleton@peoplepc.com