Using our senses to locate bass

[gim]

Lol I know, sometimes they are everywhere it seems and the first thought is "holy bananas the bass are on a feeding frenzy at the surface."

 

Only to be let down a few minutes later.

[Swamp Girl]

31 minutes ago, Reel said:

Lone bass are the most difficult to catch.

 

No competition, I'm assuming.

 

31 minutes ago, Reel said:

Groups of fish with uneven numbers ( 3, 5, 7... ) are the easiest. 

 

Fascinating. I wonder why.

 

31 minutes ago, Reel said:

 

The first cast is the magic one.  If you miss your target, it gets more difficult.  

 

Agreed. I'm not target fishing, but if I land my first cast in a likely spot, I'm much more likely to land a bass too.

 

32 minutes ago, Reel said:

Then you are better of going to another group of fish and coming back after a few minutes.  

 

I used to do this with muskies.

 

33 minutes ago, Reel said:

You can ''activate'' fish by casting to a loner that is a few feet from the group, making it head for the group and then casting to the group.  

 

This is graduate school-level angling. Thanks!

 

33 minutes ago, Reel said:

The last one... yes, sometimes you can smell bass feeding... You get a faint cucumber scent. 

 

You are Jedi Master of Sense Fishing!

[TnRiver46]

Everybody around here says copperhead smells like cucumber. I’ve never smelled that and I’ve been close to them plenty but I did smell cucumber once walking thru the woods. Didn’t see a copperhead but I started walking faster anyhow 

[fin]

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Eventually you can distinguish the sound difference in a bass engulfing something and a carp just jumping for fun.

A carp sounds like a belly-flop, a bass sounds like a scoop.

 

I don't think I've ever seen a bass come all the way out of the water that wasn't on the end of a hook. I'm sure it must happen though.

[Swamp Girl]

22 minutes ago, fin said:

I don't think I've ever seen a bass come all the way out of the water that wasn't on the end of a hook

 

Maine smallmouth come three to four feet out of the water to snatch dragonflies. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating. I wish you could see it. 

 

I don't have carp in the water I fish to confuse me, but I remember them taunting me in Ohio when I was a kid. 

[Catt]

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Didn’t see a copperhead but I started walking faster anyhow 

 

Everyone says when bank fishing to approach the waters edge silently. We got gators & cotton mouths,  I gonna be shuffling my feet & whistling Dixie!

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

 

 

 

I don't have carp in the water I fish to confuse me, but I remember them taunting me in Ohio when I was a kid. 

I’ve never seen a study done but I would bet that’s why you have so many healthy bass in your waters. Common Carp are useless scum 

[Swamp Girl]

4 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

I’ve never seen a study done but I would bet that’s why you have so many healthy bass in your waters. Common Carp are useless scum 

 

Could be. You're the scientist, so I'll follow your lead and if I ever see a carp, I'll finally get to use my bazooka. 

[GRiver]

I tried thinking about having a kind of ESP for bass. You know I’ll cast there, that’s where they’re at, but then I got to thinking. If I did have a Spider-Man kind of sense for bass, I wouldn’t cast unless there was a bass there, so why don’t I have a bass every cast. THEEEN…. I got to thinking …. Maybe I do have super powers for knowing where the bass are and every cast is a bass, but they don’t like the bait I’m throwing. SOOO…… I thought maybe I should hone my ESP skills into knowing what kind of bait they want too, and….. 

Oh look a turtle just slipped off that log, ….. is that a gator…. Man what a beautiful day. Wonder if I should switch back to junebug, or maybe a square bill. So I just went back to fishing.

[PaulVE64]

For river smallies

 

Minnows in the shallows

Blue herons near shore

 

[Alex Ball]

"Whuboosh!!!" That's my FFS. I'm a banker til I die. I listen for that sound, look for the ripples and cast past it. It has served me well. 

[MIbassyaker]

In the summer, I'm always looking for pods of sunfish dimpling the surface...sticking their fins up out in open water, usually just off a weedline or drop off.  Or sucking insects around surface vegetation with little "pops".  Bass are almost always nearby.

 

 

[Bankbeater]

A lot of the ponds I fish have water striders in them.  If the water striders are just sitting there, then most likely there aren't any fish around.  If they are cutting up and going in circles then most likely there are sunfish or minnows around, and that means bass are close by.

[WRB]

Senses like vision, hearing, smell are taking in our environment helping to make decisions coupled intuition often seals the deal.

Tom

[TOXIC]

Interesting timing.  We were out on the river yesterday and were having a tough time.  Few dinks off fishing our established pattern for the tides.  I went deep with a dropshot and could only get catfish.  We decided to run to a bank that had been successful in the past and as we started fishing it we started talking about it.  No electronics give any clues, no bank structure gives any clues, it’s a mud flat bank with a couple of chutes that funnel water out of a marshy area at low tide (we fish a lot of these type of spots so its not unique) and it’s on an outside bend of the river.  We started hooking up almost immediately and just couldn’t pinpoint why they were there on a somewhat consistent basis.  🤷

[1984isNOW]

On 7/17/2024 at 10:36 AM, fin said:

y-

@all

What fish sounds like throwing a few pennies into the water, usually happens repeatedly and all around. Only ever hear it in clear water in Maine 

 

maybe @ol'crickety will know?

 

 

I don't think I've ever had that 6 fish in 8 casts experience. I usually hit weed edges or lone pieces of cover - are packs more common in open water or relating more to specific types of structure? 

[Bazoo]

I look for things of interest... not to me, but that would be interesting to the bass. Bass like a change, any change. Change in current, depth, or wind, from cover to open, or a lone rock. Any change gets a few casts.

 

If I see bass taking off the surface, yes, I cast to them, and occasionally they respond positively.

 

I have seen bass come out of the water when feeding. I've also seen a bass jump halfway up a log to snag a bug. My buddy has seen a bass take a bat that was skimming the water. Now where did I leave my bat lure?

 

I don't use electronics, I don't have any. I'd use them if I had a boat so suited and had some... probably. I do like being able to fish a smaller body of water and be successful without electronics. For a larger body of water, finding open water structure, I could see them being my best friend.

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

6 hours ago, 1984isNOW said:

What fish sounds like throwing a few pennies into the water, usually happens repeatedly and all around. Only ever hear it in clear water in Maine 

 

maybe @ol'crickety will know?

 

I wish I could help. I equate clear water with smallmouth and trout. I fish tannin-stained, lmb water, so I haven't heard this sound. 

[fin]

7 hours ago, 1984isNOW said:

What fish sounds like throwing a few pennies into the water, usually happens repeatedly and all around.

That makes me think of a bird that I don't know the name of. I think it's some kind of Swift. They fly fast and low over the water and occasionally hit the surface, eating some kind of bug or shad. They make a sound like that.

[BucksBasser]

On 7/16/2024 at 3:25 PM, GreenPig said:

I'm a serious bird watcher for locating fish. I scan the entire time I'm on the water looking for busting fish or shad being pushed on the surface. 

A couple of Osprey sitting in a tall shoreline tree is a sure sign.

 

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, fin said:

That makes me think of a bird that I don't know the name of. I think it's some kind of Swift. They fly fast and low over the water and occasionally hit the surface, eating some kind of bug or shad. They make a sound like that.

Lots of swallows will do that, and chimney swift is a type of swallow. You were on the right track ! 

[livin2fish]

 

c/n @1984isNOW

That would be schooled shad being pushed to the surface and jumping out of the water most likely.

[Swamp Girl]

40 minutes ago, livin2fish said:

 

c/n @1984isNOW

That would be schooled shad being pushed to the surface and jumping out of the water most likely.

 

I've heard that pennies-being-thrown-into-the-water-sound in the ocean when seals are chasing baitfish and an entire school of baitfish arc out of the water in flight. It sounds exactly like tossed pennies. I've just never heard it in freshwater ponds. I have seen and heard plenty of leaping shad, but in freshwater, they tend to leap one or two at a time and not in tight schools.

[livin2fish]

@ol'crickety

I defer to someone far more knowledgeable than I.  It was an assumption (I know better) on my part that it was shad, them being the biggest baitfish source in the lake.  Could be any school of fish small enough to be lunch for other larger fish.  Only way it ties with the original question of the senses and fishing is, I hear it almost every time on the lake and before turning around the school is gone.  The sound, more like a purring sound to me, causes me to make a couple of casts to the spot normally coming up empty.

[1984isNOW]

I feel inclined to believe it's bait fish leaping as well, but I hear this with great frequency and at varying times. Sometimes it lasts for an hour all around me, and I don't hear any bigger splashes like a bass chasing one and I basically never catch anything casting all sorts of lures.

 

In a hundred foot radius this will happen all around me, I've seen it 5 ft deep and 20 ft deep.  Just bizarre