Covering water vs picking apart the area

[TriStateBassin106]

When ever i'm fishing a big body of water on my boat I seem to find myself throwing slower baits for maxium catchability. Let's say for example you're on the boat fishing a set of docks or laydowns with a reaction bait. will you continue down the shoreline with the reaction bait covering water or will you stop and pick apart the area you just fished with something more finesse if you think the fish are there? 

 

Genuinely curious if anyone else gives up easily on covering water and picks apart the shoreline off the boat. I had this exact scenario this weekend on the water and found myself slowly working all the docks and laydowns I fished a spinnerbait with before to no avail.

 

 

[WRB]

You have a boat use your sonar to search for bass and bait fish. The 1st things I want to know are what is the water temperature and how deep and what are the prey the bass are feeding on.

This information should be found in it near the marina you launch your boat at.

I never pound the shore line hoping to find bass unless that is where the bass are located,

Tom

[rgasr63]

To go alongside your question I only pick apart areas that I believe that have fish present. Sonar stuff help that. If you see baitfish or Bass themselves you have cut your time down a lot

[Choporoz]

5 hours ago, TriStateBassin106 said:

 or will you stop and pick apart the area you just fished with something more finesse if you think the fish are there? 

 

Yes.    But not all day.  I fished from a kayak for years before getting a boat.  The limited mobility, compared to a boat, led me to be extremely thorough before big moves.  So, I am predisposed to fish slow and I will do that on the first few high percentage areas.  I often learn a lot about fish mood by starting with power and then scouring with finesse if power isn't getting bit.  But....if the area seems void of bait and bites I will move on pretty fast.  However, even that decision might be seasonally dependent.  I used to bail out on creek arms, bays and coves if I didn't see hardly any bait in the first third or half.  Certain times of the year bait can get so concentrated that I need to scan all the way back before moving on.

 

  One more but  ....sometimes when I know I only have a couple few hours on the water, I will just fish fast and move around, looking only for active aggressive bass

[Mike L]

There’s a lot to be said about covering water and even more about concentrating on certain spots. 
Personally, I do it in that order until a fish or bait show themselves. 
 

Down here I’m methodical about covering water in specific, certain areas that have shown themselves to be productive,  

but at the same time stopping in likely areas when conditions have shown to be productive. 
 

I don’t use “finesse” tactics much at all as I’ve never felt the need to. 
I’ll change baits, speed and angles first and foremost. 
 

 

 

Mike 

[GRiver]

@TriStateBassin106 I can be the same way sometimes. If I have a gut feeling that something is there, I’ll try different bait, colors, the way I fish the bait. 
 My electronics are a $99.00 hummingbird, that I got over ten years ago, other than using it as a depth finder, doesn’t do me any good. I usually fish pretty shallow anyway.

So yes sometimes I will pick apart area until I find out what they want…. Most of the time I find out what they don’t want. 
 

 

[Catt]

5 hours ago, TriStateBassin106 said:

found myself slowly working all the docks and laydowns I fished a spinnerbait with before to no avail.

 

Spinnerbait ain't exactly slowing down. 

 

Time of year helps me determine which. 

[Zcoker]

I cover the water in order to find a place to pick apart, or, more specifically, to get the layout of the land. Moving around is just part of the drill. And yet, moving around has gotten me some great catches. Often, going back to an area can have great results. Just a matter of timing, being in the right place at the right time, which wouldn’t happen if I didn’t move around. All in all, moving around paints a sort of living image of the situation(s) that I will need to focus on…..techniques, presentations and so forth, rounding out my day or night. 

[Pat Brown]

I think the biggest mistake most people make on the bank and in boats when bass fishing is they park their butts in a 'good looking area' and then do target practice next to bushes and trees in a vacant cove.

 

You basically have to keep moving.

 

Even when you are on them, it's usually only one or two fish max before they are on to you and then you gotta let an area cool a little which means...yeah...moving.

 

I just keep a mental note of places. I've been getting bit and make a point of hitting them more than one time throughout the day if I really think they'll produce again. 

 

It's pretty rare that a population of Bass that I hammer on and catch a few out of bites more than once in a day. They're smarter than that around here.

[scaleface]

If I'm junk fishing down a bank I generally cover water fairly quickly [I'm not a KVD type burner] and pick apart cover encountered.

[Jmilburn76]

I took my kayak out yesterday to a spot on the lake that I generally catch them at but got skunked. I didn’t notice many baitfish so I should have packed it up but I’m too hard headed and it cost me. 
 

I need to pick up the pace and cover a lot more water than I do.

[DaubsNU1]

Here is where I second guess myself:

 

Moving around the lake, hitting the spots that have been productive in the past...catching no fish...keep moving.

 

When I finally catch a fish on a spot I know to be good...do I stay and pick it apart? Or move to another spot?

 

Never leave fish to find fish...right  : )

 

Or did I just catch the one fish that was active on that spot...and should keep moving to the next spot, looking for active feeders?

[Pat Brown]

@DaubsNU1 if I go 15 minutes without another bite in the area I'm moving.

[TriStateBassin106]

2 hours ago, Catt said:

 

Spinnerbait ain't exactly slowing down. 

 

Time of year helps me determine which. 

I kinda worded that wrong. I meant to say that I was fishing the shoreline with a spinnerbait looking for a reaction bite, but turned around and re-fished it again with a slower presentation because I believed there was fish there. 

[casts_by_fly]

I tend to fish moving baits towards cover of some type until I get a read on the fish for that day.  If they aren't eating moving baits then that's my read that they are holding tight to something or offshore and I need to slow down and pick something apart.  If I catch one from a piece of cover that looks like it will have more I'll fish it more.  Usually a couple more casts with a moving bait and then throw something like a jig or texas rig in it.

 

Then again, what do I know.  I'm the guy that fish saturday for 9 hours, could show you tons of baitfish all over the lake on all of the different imaging, could see schools of bigger fish on side imaging (I don't believe they were bass), and only managed to catch two crappie in the process (albeit 15" fish that looked like bass on live imaging).

[A-Jay]

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO ?

 

The age old question.  The one so many bassheads, including myself, ask themselves at least once a trip and often times it’s quite a bit more than that.

I’m referring to when we are on a spot, whether it was producing or not, we’ve given it what in our own minds is ample opportunity to produce and it hasn’t.  So, do we stay or do we go ?

 Let me back the truck up a little here and say, since this is

The “Brown Bass Tools” thread, the following thoughts will relate most in that direction. Also, I do not fish competitively so “Time” has a different meaning to me.

 

   Clearly no hard and fast ‘rules’ can be drawn upon during these deals but here’s my version of it.

 

I am going to start off with a couple of ‘deciding factors’ that often cause me to lean one way or the other.

Seasonal pattern and what I’m fishing, so boat position.

 

Early season before and of course during the spawn, fish are looking & wanting to come shallow.  Not exactly a new flash and something we don’t even need FFS to figure out. This can be one scenario where I am often willing wait it out on a known or recently producing spot or area.  And if I do chose to relocate, I’m generally not going very far, like maybe just 2 or 3 cast lengths one way or the other; depending on what type of structure/cover I working with. If I’m feel particularly confident that the fish are ‘coming to me’ (eventually), I may Talon down, shut everything off (electronics wise) and have a sandwich while the area ‘settles down a little.’  Might be just enough to have a few more fatties roll right into casting distance.  Sometimes it happens by itself if I need to retie or perhaps change baits or hardware. 

 On scene weather conditions can & do play a role here as well. Especially is skinny water;10 ft or less.  Increase or decrease in cloud cover and or wind speed can effect my decision making matrix.  Forecast or not, if it’s been a sun’s out bite and clouds move in, I may wait them out if I can see an end in sight.  Reverse can be said if it’s been a cloudy skies deal.  Bites in the wind rarely get better if it flattens out, so I’ll usually not put too much extra time into an area if it and when it goes flat calm. But going from calm to windy is a whole different ballgame and one I like to play.

Chuck & wind baby.

 

 As the season progresses and the spawn is done & over with, the local brown bass population on the bigger inland lakes, makes themselves very scares by spreading out all over the place.  This goes straight into summer and is the time of year where I do The Most moving around and will only stay on spots very briefly. Except for some early morning or late afternoon topwater off the end of long deep main lake points, I’m almost always fishing deep(er).  Trying to focus on targets of deep bottom cover (rocks/wood) that could hold bait/bass.  If I can get a bait in front of them, they’ll usually eat.  Maxscent flat worm is a confidence bait here for me. Need decent conditions, some sun helps, boating traffic does not.

 

It’s easy to admit that this IS the toughest fishing of the year for me.  Accordingly I don’t spend a whole lot of time on these bigger lakes late June thru most all of July.  But sometime in the first week or two of August, things get much, much better.

  Bigger bass start showing up shallow again.  It’s almost always on flats.  They seem to be a bit more scattered/spread out but there’s some real brutes up there.  And they are looking to EAT.  As the shallow weeds die back and the bait fish become more and more exposed, the fishing just keeps getting better.

 Almost becomes the same type of deal for me as in the spring.  Fish are coming to me so I don’t move much.  But that’s sort of a relative thing, I still need to cover water, but it's just over one or two special flats.  So I’m not running all over the lakes, just doing a lot of casting.  From August to say mid September, it’s all about horizontal moving baits. Could be topwater early and just about whatever you want to throw after that,  Vibrating jigs, spinnerbaits, swimbaits, swim jigs, A-Rigs, Squarebills & rattlebaits.   Some of the best flats are also the biggest.  A basshead could spend an entire day just crisscrossing one flat with different baits at various depths.  And this one does exactly that. So in this case – I stay.

 Come October, the weeds have died back completely, the waters cooled off considerably, the bass start looking deeper for their winter time haunts.

 If the the weather cooperates, and I can fish the deepest flats that have hard cover effectively, this can be the best time of the year for me for sheer numbers of 3-5 lb smallies.  Blade baits & swimbaits on a jighead are Big time players for me now.

I’ll stay on a spot long enough to get a couple of biters and then hop over to the next spot and do the same deal.  It’s usually late enough in the season where boating traffic is not an issue (everyone’s deer hunting) and the few boats on the water are targeting walleye and rarely on anything I’m looking to get on.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Fish Hard

A-Jay

[TriStateBassin106]

57 minutes ago, scaleface said:

If I'm junk fishing down a bank I generally cover water fairly quickly [I'm not a KVD type burner] and pick apart cover encountered.

Yeah I junk fish a lot, especially when i'm on the bank like at ponds. I usually start off with a reaction bait, walk around the pond, then after no bites i'll switch to a slower presentation. On the boat however. This seems to be thrown out the window, I find myself picking up the slower presentations first in an area I know has fish. This past weekend was a prime example, I rolled up into a cove with a feeder creek in the middle. I casted my jerkbait a couple times into the current with no bites. switched over to throwing a big TRD on a ned rig and caught 3. 

[gim]

I almost always start with a faster, more aggressive approach.  It doesn't take very long to figure out if they are willing to bite on this - 15 minutes maybe.  If nothing, its time to slow down and be more patient.  Not really how I like to fish, but has to be done sometimes.

[Catt]

4 hours ago, Catt said:

 

Time of year helps me determine which. 

 

Examples 

Pre-spawn/spawn, the bass are moving, this Cajun will be moving.

 

Dog Days of Summer with night time temperatures still in the 90s, the bass are lethargic & not moving. This Cajun ain't gonna be wondering around far.

 

I've been known to sit on a single piece of offshore structure all night. 

[Zcoker]

2 hours ago, Catt said:

 

 

Dog Days of Summer with night time temperatures still in the 90s, the bass are lethargic & not moving. This Cajun ain't gonna be wondering around far.

 

I've been known to sit on a single piece of offshore structure all night. 

 

It's just the opposite down here in south Florida on hot summer nights. The bass are, well, they're lunatics! The will hit with an angry vengeance like no other, espeically topwater. Talk about a wake-up call. Goes to show just how different areas can be! 

 

[Team9nine]

3 hours ago, TriStateBassin106 said:

I kinda worded that wrong. I meant to say that I was fishing the shoreline with a spinnerbait looking for a reaction bite, but turned around and re-fished it again with a slower presentation because I believed there was fish there. 

I once wondered the same thing, so years ago, I did a simple on-the-water test to see what would happen. Here’s the write-up I did at the time:

 

“I pulled up to the boat ramp Friday afternoon to find a tourney about to head out. I hung around and waited for them to blast off so I wouldn’t get in their way before proceeding out. It also kind of changed my plans for the night, so at the last minute I decided to do another of those fun but meaningless on-the-water tests to see just what you can and can’t get away with when fishing for bass. In this case, power vs. finesse on the same stretch of water.

 

I started on a stretch of bank that encompassed 2 small coves and 2 stretches of main lake shoreline. Total distance according to Google Maps was a little over half of a mile, about 3,100 ft., and this lake is lined with docks and scattered shallow weeds. I began with power, picking up a buzzbait and running the entire stretch of bank. My thought was hit the fish first with the fast presentation while they might be active versus making that the comeback lure after already beating on them once. And I didn’t just kick the troll motor on high and wing it either, as I throw a pretty wicked buzzbait. I just steadily worked the entire shoreline area til the end. When I was done with that stretch, I had caught 11 bass and missed 3 other strikes, 1 of which I’m pretty certain was counted in the catch when I threw immediately back to the same area after missing a strike and promptly got another blowup right in the same exact spot, only this time connecting.

 

Next, I picked up the finesse rod with the small soft plastic and immediately turned around and reworked the exact stretch of bank I had just been through with the buzzer. It actually got a little too dark before I completed the entire stretch, but I was able to rework about 80% of it. The result...12 more bass, including the two largest of the trip. That made for a total of 23 bass landed in about 1 hour and 45 minutes.

 

So take what you want from this little experiment. One thing that seems obvious would be that if you move through an area throwing one type of bait, odds are good that you didn’t catch everything, only whatever was prone to hit that particular bait. This becomes a good argument for having two guys in the same boat throwing two completely different baits until they get a pattern dialed in during team tourneys, or for co-anglers to make certain they aren’t trying to work the same stretch of water as the boater up front using the same lure. Use something totally different in most cases to better your odds of catching fish behind him.“

 

Bottom line, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If you feel confident or comfortable in a stretch of bank and think there might be (more) bass holding in the area, then definitely rework it with another presentation. It won’t always pan out, but it will sometimes.

 

[Choporoz]

1 hour ago, Team9nine said:

Bottom line, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If you feel confident or comfortable in a stretch of bank and think there might be (more) bass holding in the area, then definitely rework it with another presentation. 

I think maybe there's another potential lesson.  I am unlikely to work a section/area twice, in different directions.   But it is possible that having a bit of time between power and finesse to a 'spot' was important.  That is, perhaps alternating baits during a single pass might not have had as good of results.   

 

Oh heck...the more I think about it, the more I convince myself that I don't know what I'm talking about...we don't even know if the buzzbait might have been better on the return trip than on the first pass...or if the later fish were even in that neighborhood during the first pass

[scaleface]

Often you just have to play it by ear. I once went through a brushy area with a buzzbait and no takers. Conditions were pointing to buzzbait but you cant force bass to bite. I went back though with a Bomber Prop A, a more slower,  finessey top-water and nailed them [first time using that lure] .  I remember the year was 1987. Sometimes I remember years but cant remember yesterday. That lure has been a staple in my repertoire since. 

[Catt]

5 hours ago, Zcoker said:

Goes to show just how different areas can be! 

 

Are you talking shallow water?

 

I'm talking deep water 15-30', even though I'm staying on one spot & fishing slow, I'll end up with a couple dozen fish with kickers 6#+. 

[Koz]

This is the question that almost every amateur angler asks themselves every time they head out.

 

It’s also the question almost every pro angler knows the answer to BEFORE they head out.