Searching for active bass

[bassmanET]

Got out Friday morning before work for 2 hours. I wanted to practice throwing a stick bait. I haven't caught a fish on any type of plastic worm yet. I need to learn how to slow down & be patient! So, I used a small spinnerbait to search for active bass. Second cast I hooked 12" 1lber, then a small 10"er. I got carried away & kept marching down the shore throwing the spinnerbait & didn't catch anything else.

When I finally decided to switch to stick bait, I didn't have much time left. Should I have stayed in the area & worked it with a stick worm? What could or should I have done different? :-?

[Grey Wolf]

You should have done what you had planned to do . You had a solid idea what you wanted to do and didn't do it. Live and learn.

[WRB]

Describe what you met by a stick bait, different regions of the country may have another name for it.

WRB

[bassmanET]

senko type worm

[InLikeFinz]

Yeah, if you want to practice and get good with a certain bait I'd leave the others at home. It's tempting to tie something else on, I can definitely relate to that. I've wanted to ONLY bring jigs on the boat this year to learn them but haven't gotten the courage to do so. 

[bassmanET]

:-/I guess what I'm asking is, was the 2 fish I caught right away the active fish I was looking for?

Or would you have looked for a couple of more bites before moving on or switching to different lure? :-/

[WRB]

senko type worm

I see said the blind man, must be a generation gap.

Stick baits to me are long slender hard lures, both floating prop and shallow diving types.

Senko's are slow sinking soft plastics that can be presented with several techniques; unweighted and weighted rigs.

When bass are striking a reaction lure and size of the bass are what you want; keep fishing until the bit stops. Now go back over the same area with the slower Senko rigged however you like. The Senko has it's own built in action as it sinks and this takes a degree of patients , that isn't easy when you are used to fishing faster and want to cover a lot of water.

WRB

[evrgladesbasser]

senko type worm

I see said the blind man, must be a generation gap.

Stick baits to me are long slender hard lures, both floating prop and shallow diving types.

Senko's are slow sinking soft plastics that can be presented with several techniques; unweighted and weighted rigs.

When bass are striking a reaction lure and size of the bass are what you want; keep fishing until the bit stops. Now go back over the same area with the slower Senko rigged however you like. The Senko has it's own built in action as it sinks and this takes a degree of patients , that isn't easy when you are used to fishing faster and want to cover a lot of water.

WRB

Good call on the "generation gap". I used to call a senko a stick bait as well, have learned a lot since those days...

[Frogman]

When you find active fish you want to fish them, but most important thing is to figure out why they are there and try to recreate that situation with other spots.  Once you catch a couple fish in  a spot, look around think about current, what type of structure your fishing, depth, temp, angle of the boat.  Catching fish on a reaction strike is not the same as finding active fish.  Active fish to me are caught with jerkbaits or crankbaits....anything they have to chase down.  Once you find a pattern to active fish start throwing your senko in all places similar.  If there are baitfish in the area then they may not be so eager to pick up on the senko.  I use senkos primarily for the more inactive fish or highly pressured fish.

[garland7]

If you looking how to find the active fish, you may have found one with your spinner bait. What I am hearing though, is you need to learn to fish different baits ( in as many styles and retrieves as you can ). Then and only then, after applying it with seasonal patterns ( depending on the conditions ), you will take alot of the guessing game away, and figure out the fish will tell you what they want. Thus, a pattern.

[Chris]

Fish the fish and how they want to bite not the way you want them to bite. I say this because it is easy to say if you want to learn a bait fish it till you get the hang of it but the truth is that bass may not want that presentation and some water fishes different. You may be doing everything right but because of how the fish are positioned, food source, water conditions, activity level, and mood they may not pay much attention to your presentation. Many times anglers get caught up with the idea that if it works for angler x,y,z it should work for me or if it works for this lake it should work for that lake which may not be the case. The fish you caught wanted a horizontal presentation and rejected the vertical. You should have expanded your horizontal. What teaches anglers new stuff is when bass want to eat what your doing. It is frustrating to use something and find that it isn't producing and then you second guess the technique. The best thing to do is give part of your day learning and trying out new stuff to try to figure out when is the best situation to apply a technique. Many chalk up a bite from a lure like a spinnerbait or crankbait that the bass must be active and that was the reasoning  why they hit it which may not be the case either. Analyze how they hit it and at what point. Where was the fish positioned and what was the bait doing when the strike occurred. You can have a group of fish that will hit a lure the same way which leads into patterning fish but bass tend to be made up of a group of individuals that may bite different depending on how they are positioned on cover, structure or even depth. This means that sometimes it takes different presentations to turn on certain fish or to make them commit to a bait.

[fishfordollars]

Stick bait: Rogue type

Senko: Plastic

[Crestliner2008]

I like to fish what I have a lot of confidence in to start with. Locate active fish doing that. Then, try something new that I want to learn, once you've found the fish. Best way to learn something new is by catching fish with it. You can't do that until you find 'em. Hope that makes sense! 

[bassmanET]

Hey thanks everyone for the advice!

I have a hard time with slower presentations. Especially when I only have a couple of hours to fish. Also, hooking 2 fish in the first 15 minutes with a spinnerbait, its hard to put it down when the bite slows down. I have done well with a jig. That Friday I did have a small largie take the senko & run but, the worm was bigger than him lol! I guess that's a start!

[Matt Fly]

I have seen the crossover and understand the stick bait terminology.

    To me, a stick bait was always a hard jerk bait.

One of the first actions imparted with plastic type stick baits was twitching them like jerk baits, thus another type of stick bait.

  The hard rogue type baits will always be stick baits to me.

      

   

 

[WRB]

The lakes mentioned are all large highland reservoirs with both Threadfin and Gizzard shad populations.

Guntersville Elite tournament posted a winning weight of over 100 lbs for Skeet Reese and you should read everything possible on how the top 12 fished.

The spawning season is misunderstood by most bass anglers. The act of spawning or the time the female bass actually lay eggs occurs over several weeks or even up to 3 months, it's not a 1 week event, especially on big highland reservoirs.

To me pre spawners are the staging female bass that have mature eggs near ready to lay and male bass moving into spawning areas and staking out bed sites. Spawners are those bass with beds and females moving in to lay eggs. Post spawners are those bass that have completed the spawning cycle.

What gets fuzzy are the females that haven't layed all their eggs due to the fact the eggs mature at different times and the big females may move up to spawn 2 or 3 batches of eggs over a several week period, as the eggs mature, then move back and re stag. Combine this with different water temperatures throughout a big highland reservoir and the spawning cycles can last up to 3 months or more.

Post spawners are often re stagged at the same location as they did for pre spawn.

If you target the staging areas, you can catch big bass for several months. After the bass transition to the summer period, fish the outside structure areas where the bass can target the pelagic bait fish.

WRB

[Big Fish Rice]

Etzo,

I'm going to have to disagree with many other users here, but that's not to say my way is the right way; it's the technique that works for me.

With you never catching a fish on a senko, it will eventually become a bait that will catch fish when all others fail.

Last weekend, I fished an entire shoreline with 3 different spinnerbaits, 3 different crankbaits, and made a final pass with a 4" Senko.

The only bait that landed me 3 fish was the Senko. The largest being 3.5 pounds, and the smallest just over a pound.

I actually have video of it on my blog, but my point here is this: after searching for the active feeders and not catching a single one, you could have tied on the Senko and re-fished the same areas.

Your water might not be warm enough for the bass to expend their energy chasing a spinnerbait. The Senko is a finesse presentation. Easy prey means less energy expended for the bass.

1. Go get a pack of 4" Senkos.

2. The color should be Smoke w/ Black Flake or Green Pumpkin.

3. Rig it weightless and Texas style.

4. Throw it, let it sink....and wait for at least 30 seconds before moving.

5. Slowly lift the tip of your rod straight up in the air, and move it a foot or two closer to your position.

6. Let it sink back down, and make sure to reel up the loose slack (not completely tight, just a little loose).

7. If you feel tension at anytime, set the hook.

8. If you see your line move to either side, set the hook.

9. Fish it slow, and you'll gain enormous confidence

10. The worm can be your most successful bait if you have the patience.