Finding a secret spot. Do you have one?

[Darth-Baiter]

I like tips as much as the next guy.  I NEVER ask for specifics. When I started kayak fishing I pictured myself just exploring bodies of water.  Most of my friends are addicted to one lake. They never go anywhere.  It’s a Great Lake, and rarely skunks anyone.  Me and this one guy are the explorers.  We both google earth the area and find tempting juicy looking locations. 
 

im burning lots of gasoline.  My oil changes happen way too often. 
 

When you land in a fantastic, clean, beautiful lightly fished lake.  Mouth shut?  

“ I didn’t see nutin!”??

 Both of us agreed we take this one to the grave.  We missed the spring-fest, but next season!!!….I love trying new lakes.  It’s a puzzle right when you launch that kayak. That first fish is by like mating the first two puzzle pieces.  It just gets easier from there. 

[TheBasslayer]

I do have one, and if I put my waders on, I wade down the stream and sometimes I'll catch a big fish! I've seen 4 pounders, and it's only a matter of time!

[throttleplate]

i do, but you need to be okay with wearing waders, be abe to twist and crawl over sunken trees, expect to submerge your reel a few times stepping into a sinkhole, at times getting your line out of a tree limb, occasionally meeting a holstein cow taking a drink......

[scaleface]

I have a spot on a public lake that produces trip after trip . For the longest time I  could not figure out why . Eventually it sunk in . Now that I know why , the spot is even better because I approach it  more efficiently .

[BassNJake]

I've got a gem on a public lake and everyone overlooks it because of how shallow the water is

I went thru about 15-20 toads yesterday once I got back there. 

About an acre of 3 foot or less water that is a skinny shallow creek 9 months of the year

This one blew up under the bridge and the echo made it sound so awesome!!

 

[islandbass]

No need for secrets. I'm a minority in my neck of the woods as a bass angler, and I don't mean my skin color.  Everyone pretty much targets trout so I have the bass all to myself, and hence, my minority status, lol. I just might be expanding my bass sphere. My wife bought a regular kayak (she got hooked on it on her own) and that surprised me since she isn't that type of outdoors person. and so I got a regular one too, non fish-specific.  We just need to get a rack now.

 

After getting familiar with it, I will take just one rod and a handful of baits to see what this Kayak fishing is like.  The gear is such that even if I lost in in the lake, I ain't going to cry over it, lol. And who knows? I just might find some secret spots.

[senile1]

I have spots, but I can't say whether or not they are secrets.  If other anglers fish them when I am not around, I would never know, right?   The key thing is the proper presentation for specific conditions at those spots.  Unlock that, and you have yourself a spot.  Fail to unlock it and you may fish it and move on, not realizing you were sitting on a gold mine.

[Derek1]

I had one, then someone else found it. It got cleaned out one night and now it’s waste of time going there. 

[12poundbass]

It’s not a big secret, just most don’t want to back their boat 300’ down a two track and the back their boat with the trolling motor another 100’ or so to get turned around. It’s work and a pain but it’s worth it and has produced mine and my wife’s PB both over 5lbs. 

[RenzokukenFisher]

I have a gem near where I live, it's basically a fantasy land. A good half a mile hike in and off the beaten path a bit. This place is a trip how its structured. Its water surface ebbs between 50 and 10 acres depending on the time of the year. Thing is, about 6 months of the year the fish are almost inaccessible from the bank. When the water levels are higher during those 6 months the fish stage along water primrose weedlines out of a bank anglers reach, and if you were to hook one you're about guaranteed to lose it in those mangled primrose. You have late summer through late winter to target the fish and stand a chance at getting them to your feet, giving you about 3 or 4 months of prime time to target them since winter fishing there you will skunk every single time, I've tried. It quite literally feels like nature designed this place with the intentions of protecting the fish from angling pressure. Here's the reason I've never given up on this spot: This place has the chance to bless you with a fish of a lifetime and multiple at that. Despite not being stocked or maintained, the fish are huge, but few in number. Personally I have caught an 8lb fish (the one in my pfp) and a 6.5lb fish, but I know others who have caught multiple 8lb class fish, 9lb class fish, and someone who caught a 12lb fish there. Knowing these have been caught leads me to believe there are certainly more pushing over into the Double Digit range. Many of the big ones are young too. An 8 has the mouth of a 6 and the 6 has the mouth of a 4. Currently the place is in a tough phase to fish from the bank but in a few more months I'll be testing my luck out there. I'll gladly leave the fish alone for now so when the time comes they will have no fear eating a lure.

[king fisher]

Yes.  I have fished a small reservoir for about a year now, and have landed 4 bass over 10 pounds and two more that I think were that big but I did not have a scale. One is my avatar picture, the other was it's twin caught an hour before.  I had left my camera in my car so only got the picture of the one bass.  Not exactly a secret because there are about a dozen commercial gill netters that fish the lake and a few local shore fisherman using line rapped around bottles, with what ever lure they make or find. Excluding these skilled fisherman, there is almost no fishing pressure.  Most days I don't see a person.

   The friend that told me about the lake is a saltwater fisherman who went there once landed an 11 pound bass and has only been back a couple of times in 3 years.  It is very close to a popular lake with multiple lodges, so I am enjoying it now, knowing that the word will get out and like many places I have fished, the best days will be gone soon.  Luckily I have another untouched spot I am going to explore this summer.

[Bluebasser86]

Yes. I caught my PB swimbait fish from a small pond on public land next to a public reservoir. It's so tiny that I doubt many people even realize there's fish in it. I'm pretty sure the state killed it when they clear cut some trees around it. I think the water gets so hot now because it's so small and shallow with no shade at all anymore that the bass seem to all be gone. 

[Catt]

Finding a secret spot. Do you have one?

 

Yeah it's so secret the bass can't find it!

[soflabasser]

I fish public waters which are not ''secret spots'' yet I do much better than most people that fish around me. The reason for my success is simple, I do my best to learn from each fishing trip and focus on my own fishing. Most people seem to be too focused on what others are doing when they should be focused on their own fishing.

[Bankc]

I don't really have a lot of opportunities for secret spots in Oklahoma.  But there are a few spots on the big lakes where I can get my kayak into that big bass boats can't go.  These spots also tend to be a good distance from any place to launch a kayak, so I imagine even most kayakers won't visit them.  But I'll use my trolling motor to get out there, and then pick it up and switch to paddle to proceed once I'm there.  There usually aren't a ton of bass in those areas, but I can often catch one or two small ones.  I don't imagine that I'm the only one who knows about them, they're pretty obvious to find, but I also don't imagine that there are a lot of people who can actually fish them.  

[Big Hands]

In order to have a secret spot, I would need to have a second boat to use to explore other waters, or have a mandatory 10 day wait after fishing somewhere else. There are two lakes that allow boating (three if you count only being allowed to idle around a small park lake), and the other one that allows normal boating activity is a 250 acre bull ring. The lake I live near and fish regularly is 2,200 acres when full (currently 50' below full pool) and is the lake in a metropolitan area of over 10 million people (Los Angeles County). The only saving grace (if you can call it that) is that the state and county have managed to make boating so inconvenient (Quagga mussel protocols) and expensive ($24 to launch and park, so I buy a yearly pass for $285) that many don't bother or go to destinations further away (out of state even) to have a better boating experience.

 

In spite of all that, the fishing is surprisingly decent most of the time and we can fish year round . . . . . under the close supervision of the various government agencies and only between sunrise and sunset. But there are no secret spots to find or fish and it just is what it is. 

[DitchPanda]

Very little pressure for Bass around me...everybody is focused on pan fish, walleye and cats. Guess the secret is there is alot of fairly good bass fishing around me if you know how to target them. But for some reason I keep forgetting to tell people about it. I think it really comes down to people not knowing what they are doing.

Had a guy last year tell me its to cold in April to catch bass around here...this was right after I had caught a 7lb lmb.

 

[Jaderose]

My little home lake has a couple of spots on it that I don't really talk about too much.  I know virtually all of the guys that boat fish this lake and I think everyone of us has a spot or two like that on this lake so I imagine there is some overlap....lol.

[geo g]

Yes I do.  The most important thing is keep your mouth shut.  Don’t post pics of fish that will give away your location.  Stay in stealth mode or you will soon be sharing your honey hole!  

[TOXIC]

Secret spot as in secret body of water or secret spot on an existing body of water?  I used to think the chain of lakes I fished in Wisconsin, even though it is fished and even has some tournaments on it, was pretty secret because most of the fishermen were after walleye, musky or trout along with panfish.  I used to be able to catch 50-75 fish a day with a dropshot, DShad and Senko.  Good mix of largemouth and smallmouth.  They sprayed the aquatic vegetation and now it’s a night only bite and I’m not fighting the skeets.  I’m not even going to take my boat this year.  I had what I thought was a secret spot on the lake I guided on until another guide I know who lived directly across from it told me that it gets pounded every tournament but that he never sees anyone but me catch fish off it.  ?

[cheezyridr]

secret spot? kind of...

 

there is a place i used to go to all the time that was fan-frickin-tastic. it was a private hole that  almost no one but me was allowed to fish.   it looks like a swamp crick.  in order to fish it (can't use a boat)  you have to deal with getting covered in mud  from the waist down,, and you have to deal with loads of ticks. 

but...

 

i've hooked bass in there i couldn't control. 

seen a 9 lb pickerel

seen a 5 lb crappie

foul hooked a monster carp on a mepps spinner.

caught my  biggest catfish ever, in a johnson silver minnow with a pork rind trailer on it

have had days when i went in at dawn, and went home by 11 because i caught so many bass in the 3-5 lb range, my wrist was sore

[the reel ess]

I've got a big, privately owned spot. I have a gate key. A few others can get in there, but some of them just troll for crappie.

[fishwizzard]

Face-to-face with someone I’ll give up basically everything, even specific pieces of cover/structure.

 

There’s one very tiny spot that I keep completely close to the chest though. It’s a small, I mean like maybe an acre, pond in a unpopular public park.  Because of its size you can present a lure to basically every square yard of water in maybe 1 to 3 hours depending on what your fishing.  Because of this you can generally take “finding the bass”. out of the equation, so it’s my favorite spot for testing out whatever new piece of tackle I’m currently obsessed with.  There are a couple 2 to 3 pound bass in there but it’s mostly little one pounders. It’s so small that I don’t want it to get any more pressure and especially don’t want someone to show up and take out a few big bass that are there so I keep my mouth shut about it.  

[HaydenS]

On 6/7/2021 at 4:28 PM, BassNJake said:

I've got a gem on a public lake and everyone overlooks it because of how shallow the water is

I went thru about 15-20 toads yesterday once I got back there. 

About an acre of 3 foot or less water that is a skinny shallow creek 9 months of the year

This one blew up under the bridge and the echo made it sound so awesome!!

 

@TnRiver46 might go find your spot, shouldn't have made the mistake of posting photos and landmarks!? jk

[soflabasser]

There is a public park in South Florida where I caught a double digit bass from land. This is a very popular park that is well known in my area but most people do not know how to fish this place well. Most people complain that it is overfished with small bass, little do they know the lunkers that live there. I have caught several +8 pounders from other public parks from land so never underestimate a place just because you are not catching big bass since someone is, they are not telling you about it. There is no such thing as a ''secret spot'' or ''secret lure'' in the public waters I fish. If you want to catch a bass of a lifetime you have to be willing to work hard for it. You can always hire a guide if this is too much work for you since the guide does most of the hard work for you.