Difficult fishing waters

[MIbassyaker]

I would be willing to bet the difficulty has very little to do with lure choice and lure noise, and much more to do with not finding and hitting productive spots. If you're stuck on the bank, you usually have to move around frequently to be successful, stay low and stealthy, and choose your casts carefully.  You're much more likely to be spooking fish by casting a looming shadow than by using a noisy lure.  Bass can tell the difference between different sounds; a vibrating chatterbait sounds like food to them; it doesn't really sound like danger. 

 

I would think more about what kind of spots do you choose to cast to? What is there to hold fish? How long do you try one spot before moving on to another?  How deep are you fishing, and how fast? How close to the bottom? I would worry about those things first before splitting hairs over the exact lure type or color or noise.  Is there vegetation, sunken trees and laydowns, or hard cover like docks, rocks or riprap?  In murky water, bass will often stay very close to cover elements like these.  If there is a lot of cover right on the shoreline, bass could be right there, much closer and shallower than you may think.

 

You can cover the bases pretty well with 2 or 3 baits -- something you can fish vertically, at multiple depths or on the bottom (jig, texas rig, ned rig), and something you can fish horizontally, through an area or past multiple spots (crankbait, spinnerbait).  In murky water, I like bright colors, like chartreuses and oranges, but it tends to matter less what the lure looks like than in clear water.

 

 

[gim]

On 7/14/2023 at 9:54 AM, Darth-Baiter said:

that kayaker guy on the TUBE catches awesome Smallie and Pike in SD.

Its actually North Dakota and Minnesota.  Close though.

 

I think @throttleplate ran into him once at an auction or something lol