What To Do When Bass Are Scattered?

[jeremyt]

A friend and I have been fishing local Sunday open tournaments and have had a hard time establishing a pattern. It's not just us though, we won last weekend with 3 keepers at 4.5 pounds. Generally in this river you can catch a few and figure out what's going on, but this fall and winter has been the opposite. A lot of people are saying that hurricane Irene screwed the fishery up, but we can catch a few. One on a jig here, another on a crank there. I know to not rely on history and to rely on what the fish tell you, but when you can only catch 5 or less in a day it gets frustrating. What would you all do?

[roadwarrior]

The fish are either interested in moving lures or sitting baits. Right now, for me,

it's Shadalicious or GMAN jig/ Rage Tail Craw. This weekend I plan to add Bandit

100s, Wiggle Warts and DD22 to the mix. I suspect the "answer" will be live bait!

[jeremyt]

RW the hot baits have been cotton Cordell big o's in a perch or fire tiger color and black n blue jigs. It's just getting frustrating because this is not the norm. We can normally go out and catch fish, just having to find the keepers. All together we caught 5 fish. 3 keepers, one dink and about a 3 pound striper. The first fish was caught at 1230 and the first keeper an hour later. We had just about decided to load up and go home. You could imagine our surprise when we got to weigh in at 4 and we were the only ones with fish.

[Chris at Tech]

Putting the trolling motor on high and cover water with moving baits

[5bass]

Putting the trolling motor on high and cover water with moving baits

This. Switch up baits and fish the whole water column til you get on something.

[Team9nine]

This. Switch up baits and fish the whole water column til you get on something.

Yep - cover more water, but use everything, fast baits and slow, vertical as well as horizontal as cover/structure dictates. Back in the day it used to be called "junk fishing", but you don't hear the term used near as often anymore for some reason.

-T9

[jeremyt]

Thanks for the advice gents, we will hit it up Sunday again and give it a go.

[Greed]

I'm a jig fisherman at heart so I put on a swim jig with a grub or paddle trailer trailer and start power fishing. My main targets would be casting parallel to weed lines and the first drop off near that weed line.