Eatin' a little humble pie--difference between pond and reservoir fishing

[TnRiver46]

Also, on the TN river, there should be a green buoy on one side of the river ledge and red on the other side

[Swamp Girl]

Bumping this thread because it's so interesting. 

[Susky River Rat]

@Swamp Girl it is interesting. I feel like most times people go to big water or new boaters and feel like they have to cover every square inch of it. I force myself to fish small. Could I be missing out sometimes? You bet I could and do! As long as I am  catching fish I am happy.  Even pros during tournaments fish small. They make an hour run but, it’s to fish something specific where they know fish are or were. They do not waste time. 

[A-Jay]

The favorite hard water past time of digging up older threads.

Totally guilty of it myself.

I like it too.

 As for this one, besides the obvious challenge of having so much more water to cover & eventually eliminate, there's the the matter of 'timing'.

Smaller water will often allow a basshead to sort of bump into the fish when they are feeding.

Since it take less time to cover the less acreage, the chances improve a bit in that regard.

This seem less of a thing when there's some vast-ness to a body of water.

Being on the right spot, at the right time and doing the right thing rarely happens by chance.  Usually requires at least some map study and then . . . . .  whole lot of fishing time. 

And the fishing time needs to happen during different times of the day, different days of the week (depending on boating traffic) and even during different seasons: at each potential spot.

  I have great spots that I only visit and find find fish at very specific times, and even during specific times of the year.  Could be a bust in the spring and Boom in the Fall.  Even vice versa too. 

So Timing can be serious swing & miss deal anywhere but big water in particular.

But when we connect, it's usually pretty good.

A-Jay

 

[Swamp Girl]

8 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

This seem less of a thing when there's some vast-ness to a body of water.

 

Heck, yeah!

 

I once waded the north shore of Lake Michigan looking for a boulder that gathered bass mentioned in a 1969 Field and Stream article. The first two summers, I skunked. Then I finally found it and out of 100 casts, I'm guessing I had 97 bass hit. I didn't hook them all, of course, but they sure kept me busy. So, 99.9% of that big water was bassless.

[A-Jay]

12 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

Heck, yeah!

 

I once waded the north shore of Lake Michigan looking for a boulder that gathered bass mentioned in a 1969 Field and Stream article. The first two summers, I skunked. Then I finally found it and out of 100 casts, I'm guessing I had 97 bass hit. I didn't hook them all, of course, but they sure kept me busy. So, 99.9% of that big water was bassless.

Nice ~

IMO, it's ALL 100 % Bassless.

Until I am able prove otherwise. 

A-Jay

[Pat Brown]

I can tell every last one of you friends this:

 

Florida bass under a sheet of ice do NOT bite in big lakes or small ponds in NC. 👍🏼😂

[Swamp Girl]

30 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

I can tell every last one of you friends this:

 

Florida bass under a sheet of ice do NOT bite in big lakes or small ponds in NC. 👍🏼😂

 

My pond is hosting a kids' bass tournament this week. Of course, they'll do a little drilling first.

[SkippinJimmy]

I like to fish lakes where I have limited history as often as I can as I enjoy the hunt almost as much as the catch.
 

Pond v reservoir fishing are different animals.  Usually if people get overwhelmed with a large body of water, it’s because they view it as a large body of water.  I look at reservoir fishing like eating an elephant.  While knowledge of bass behavior and conditions obviously play a big role, unless I have history,  I look at the overall lake as the sum of a series of smaller lakes.  However you choose to narrow the lake, if you don’t have some sort of plan, you can easily get spun out chasing the next good looking spot on a map and waste half a day and a tank of gas with little to show for it.  Once narrowed, put the trolling motor on high, cover water until you get some clues…good or bad…and adjust from there.  If you fish from a kayak, you’re just going to have to take smaller bites.

[Cuivre]

I had the same transition as the OP when my brother took me to a big reservoir the first time (Mark Twain Lake).  I eventually started to figure out the nuances, but it does take a while to learn the lake geography, structure, cover and patterns.  Medium size conservation lakes (100-500 acres) are a good transition step.  That is why I kid people who post up big fish or huge stringers on FaceBook as being the 'valedictorian of the special education class'.  LOL!  Find the right pond filled with dumb bass and you can fool yourself into thinking you're the next Kevin Van Dam.  

[Macropterus]

11 hours ago, Cuivre said:

Find the right pond filled with dumb bass

^ that’s all I ask for in this life.
 

But seriously, I can 100% relate. I bought a kayak this summer after years of being bank-bound. The results have been disappointingly eye-opening. So many spots looks fishy to me, so I’m not motivated to stick to any certain piece of cover or structure. The result is too much paddling and not enough fishing.

[Swamp Girl]

16 minutes ago, Macropterus said:

The result is too much paddling and not enough fishing.

 

Do you troll while paddling? I do and catch lots of bass. I troll underspins and spinnerbaits. If I have enough depth, Mepps are great too. If it's dark, I troll Whopper Ploppers. 

[CDMTJager]

You show me a consistently successful pro bass fisherman and Ill show you a man today with $10k-$20k or more invested in fish finding electronics, transducers etc.

In my opinion a decent side looking down looking fish finder is a must have if fishing large bodies of water that have built in topo's of the lake so you can use that to hopefully narrow your search somewhat.

 

I'm not saying as a purely amature and weekend angle you need to spend $5k on electronics but I certainly budget $500-$1k if I had a boat and access to nearby large good fisheries. If I were to go fish a big body of water talking 1000s of acres strange to me, if I had no electronics at all I wouldn't expect much successful fishing after they have completely spawned out and especially during bad fishing weather.

[CDMTJager]

On 1/27/2025 at 7:58 PM, Macropterus said:

^ that’s all I ask for in this life.
 

But seriously, I can 100% relate. I bought a kayak this summer after years of being bank-bound. The results have been disappointingly eye-opening. So many spots looks fishy to me, so I’m not motivated to stick to any certain piece of cover or structure. The result is too much paddling and not enough fishing.

See if you have any smaller fisheries where launching a boat is just not possible but a kayak is. I have a surprising number of such bodies of water near my home I never knew about till I did some research and several small rivers/big creek with little to no boat access and often to shallow for boats but not big bass and pike that I fished last year first time with my kayak and did so well I was shocked.

You WILL BE shocked how small of a hole in a big creek will hold some pretty big bass or one or two pike.

 

I found one such lake while deer and turkey scouting a public land hunting spot that was completely surrounded by thick woods and vegetation I had no idea was on the property. 

 

Google earth can be your best fishing friend. 

 

[PBBrandon]

Large reservoir = fish are harder to find but easier to catch. Some days I’ll spend hours looking for the fish and then I’ll find them, and it’ll be time for me to head home soon after. I only go to these when I have 4+ hours.

 

small pond = fish are easier to find but harder to catch. If I only have an hour or 2 I’ll go to these and toss a Ned or Texas rig around. Typically if I catch anything it’s within the first hour or so.

[AlabamaSpothunter]

The internet has changed how hard it is to find fish on big public lakes without question.   

 

If you do some googling on recent tournament results, especially if B.A.S.S. or MLF has an event on a particular lake, you can usually find all the info you need to find good fishing spots.    

 

Then you have the whole "community holes" aspect, go into any local tackle shop, or be friendly around the boat ramps, and most times knowledgeable anglers will freely share the community holes because after all, they're community.   Anybody who is competitive on a particular lake will already know those places, no use in keeping them secret.   

 

A huge reason why the most dominant anglers in the sport are 18-25 yrs old is the fact they didn't have to spend decades like Rick Clunn learning every single major Bass fishing lake in the country.   These kids show up to lakes for the first time with a graph full of waypoints.   A graph full of waypoints and copious time using FFS are the main ingredients to winning on the top levels of professional fishing these days. 

[txchaser]

I don't know if it was here or on youtube, but I recall someone making a comment about breaking a lake into thirds, and then creek arms into thirds, etc as a way to try to get dialed in faster. Seems to fit with my experience of on smaller waters I'm better off posting up on the best spot and getting them dialed in from there, and on bigger waters if I'm not getting bit I should move, assuming I have a pretty good read on where they are in the column. I'm not saying they can't be picky in big water, but it does seem like they are less picky on what, but far more likely to not even be there at all. 

 

An example of how I fished a bigger (for me) lake this weekend - we've had a south wind for a bit, pushing warm water and air towards the north end of the lake. There's warm water coming in off the creeks but it's nasty and muddy, and this lake is kindof silted in. So I wanted to be close to deeper water as we are rolling in to prespawn. That put me on the top 1/3 of the lake. 

 

Picked a point and fished all three sides of the point (directly in the wind, parallel, protected) - I expected the directly in the wind side, but nope, bite was far better on the parallel than the others. And inside that the bites were where the banks were a little steeper/less distance to deep water. I was looking for shallow fish moving up because of the warm water. What I didn't expect is that where there were fish shallow, there were often some fish out a little deeper too - hanging out waiting to move up and eat I guess. 

 

I also ran the 1/3's in one of the creek arms since it was right by the point, and relatively short. Bunch of buck bass but no bigger girls moving up to feed, which was the opposite of what was in the good area mentioned above. 

 

[Swamp Girl]

On 2/7/2025 at 3:38 PM, CDMTJager said:

See if you have any smaller fisheries where launching a boat is just not possible but a kayak is. I have a surprising number of such bodies of water near my home I never knew about till I did some research and several small rivers/big creek with little to no boat access and often to shallow for boats but not big bass and pike that I fished last year first time with my kayak and did so well I was shocked.

You WILL BE shocked how small of a hole in a big creek will hold some pretty big bass or one or two pike.

 

I found one such lake while deer and turkey scouting a public land hunting spot that was completely surrounded by thick woods and vegetation I had no idea was on the property. 

 

Google earth can be your best fishing friend. 

 

 

I strongly second Mr. Jager's suggestion. In 2023, I launched at a public ramp, which was at a river mouth feeding a lake. River mouths are often great fishing and because of the ramp, there were other boats there, including a pontoon boat with anglers casting in all directions. So, I went up the river mouth and soon encountered a laydown from one shore to the other. Perfect! That kept anyone from following me. I think I caught 27. 

 

The Google Earth suggestion is also great.