Bass Won't Cross Shallow

 Bass Will Not Go Shallow To Go Deep

This Buck Perry diagram (top) from 1973 is one of my favorites. It represents a "guideline" that a bass will not go shallow to go deep.' 

In other words, it won't swim over a shallow ridge just to go back down deeper on the other side and keep swimming toward the shallows. Why so fascinating?

(Not to mention that Mr. Bass has no clue that something might BE over there).

To build upon that, here is an excerpt from John Hope's highly regarded book, "Trackin' Trophies," originally published in 1994 and again in 2001. 

In case you aren't familiar with John, he placed radio transmitters in a bunch of giant bass and tracked their movements over the course of several years.

Excerpt from his book:

"On the Big Caney arm of Lake Fork, there is a submerged roadbed that crosses the north end of Big Caney cove. This roadbed is within five feet of the surface and will have moss growing all the way to the surface most of the year.

Radio tagged, mid-depth living bass were found to not swim over the top of this roadbed to the other side. When the mid-layer bass hits the side of the roadbed in eight feet of water or less it turns and feeds parallel to the roadbed."

Pretty amazing everything the early pioneers of the sport figured out well over 50 years ago, without any of the modern technology available today.

Wanna Catch More Fish?

 ... Fish The Bottom

(This is something I've adopted since I first spotted it in a very old magazine. It was then reaffirmed in the booklet that came with the early Flatfish lures. Yeah, it has been common knowledge for a long time. 

Then, I got into fly fishing, and I tended to forget it - since fly fishing is primarily a shallow water game. 

But it always stuck in my mind, and these days, Im going back that way again. Yet, to this day, many anglers simply ignore it. They flail a9way in the shallows and refuse to make it their main play)

One of the simplest, yet most powerful, statements of summary to come from the early Spoonplugging movement. If my memory serves, and paraphrasing just a bit, Ron Lindner once stated in response to the question of why the Lindy Rig was so successful, was that it forced anglers to fish their bait on or near the bottom where the fish were located. To this day, nearly every crankbait article since, some 60 years worth of print and advice, has at some point mentioned ”hitting the bottom,” or “deflecting off cover.”

💯 “Fish the bottom, not close but on the bottom. Disturb the bottom with your lure or bait. It's hard to get anglers to believe or do this. But this is where fish feed. How about weeds and snags? They won't bother you as much as you think. Get used to them. If you don't have this trouble, you won't be troubled by many fish either.”

Fishing News, 1967

Trolling: 3 Way Rigs

 

The other trolling method recommended by Bob Hollingsworth in the previous In’Fisherman excerpt is a slow trolled, or drifted, 3-way rig for trolling. 

Spoonpluggers, or those familiar with Don Dickson, will recognize this setup from his Minaki tapes and school. The only difference was Don used wire to get deep in the current. Don also called it, "a Wolf River Rig" at times, when used with mono lines.

👉 “[The other method used] is bouncing bottom with a red or blue No. 18 Rapala. The rig [3-way rig] is alternately lifted and dropped to advance it along the bottom. The lures are right behind or in the transducer cone.... Speed is very slow.”

👉 “This rig can also be used to run parallel to the drop-offs and weed lines. On sharp, broken structure, or shad-infested water, this rig really shines.”

👉 “Its only drawback is that it is of limited value in heavy current or high winds. The boat operator has one hell of a time managing the motor, depth sounder, his line, etc.”

👉 “We use five- to six-foot worm action-type rods and free-spool Penn reels for both of these methods. Bouncing bottom requires a short, stiff rod that won't wear your arm out lifting that sinker off the bottom.”

👉 “Trolling speed varies with the seasons and the fishes preference for the night. Twitching the rod as it is trolled will sometimes produce more strikes.”

🐟

Of course, the first thing you'll probably note is that the dipsy weights shown above are likely to be snag attractors. In that case you might want to try a banana type, "walking sinker," or one of the snagless slinky weights used by catisfishermen.
And, there's still another solution if you're snagging bottom...

In the post above, about Bob Hollingsworth’s 3-way rig, that rigs bottom weight could be a real "snag magnet" in certain conditions.
The simplest alteration to make to that rig, is to switch the dipsy-style weight to a bottom bouncer.
The bottom bouncer was created back in 1964 by N. Dakota angler, Bob Meter.
The bottom bouncer is slimmer and rides slightly higher above the bottom, compared to the dipsy/bass weight used in a 3-way rig - this makes it much less prone to snagging. You can still use the same lures or live bait as you would with a 3-way just as diagrammed in the post…and they are readily available in most good tackle shops, especially in the northern half of the Midwest.

Photo credits: various In'Fisherman, Fishing Facts

Trolling: Weight and Bait

 

Bob Hollingsworth of New York shared some specifics on local techniques used on Lake Erie as well as some Canadian lakes in a 1975 issue of In’Fisherman (their 3rd issue) that eventually ended up in a conversation about pressure, boat noise and conditioning (see last two highlights). Did this then eventually lead to a rise in the use of planer boards?

Here are some details on that method, which is probably adaptable to a variety of situations. Note the enhanced illustrations were from Edwin Lee Huff.

👉 “...walleye in Lake Erie are attracted to the surface...by the action of bait fish. As these baits feed on or near the surface, the walleye will cruise approximately five feet under the surface, using what light filters down to silhouette their prey....”

👉 “We troll for these fish using No. 11 Rapalas in silver or blue colors ...flat-lined behind the boat. We control the length of line...by counting the number of pumps, or pulls, let out.”

👉 “We find that the rubber core, twist-on sinkers are the easiest way to go. A ¼ oz. sinker, three feet ahead of the lure with 12 pulls of line out, will cause the No. 11 to run at five feet.”

👉 “Boat and motor noise seem to bother the fish... Because of this, we like to run the lures as far back of the boat as possible, sometimes going to 20 or 25 pulls.”

👉 “As word spread, this method has gained in popularity and the numbers of boats increased. As the activity of the fishermen increases, the fish are more reluctant to suspend. 

To counter this, we have used more weight to get closer to the bottom...A ⅜ oz. twist-on and 18 pulls will run the No. 11 Rapala at about nine feet.”

(Need more depth? Wanna get closer to tje bottom? There's your solution)

👉 “This year, possibly due to the conditioning factor, we have had good success using the jointed Rebels in the same sizes. Nearly all the fish caught come after sundown and before sunrise.”

Reservoirs- Structure Hit Spots

 RESERVOIRS: Buck Perry’s Structure Fishing Facts To Help You Lick ‘Em! (1987)

 

Lowland #3-type reservoir, with detailed areas labeled (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) to indicate various type structure situations (potentially good areas for the fish).

A good "structure situation" can be made up of many features ( structure, breaks [1] breaklines [2] ), but in order to be productive, they MUST be related to the deep water in the area. 

In other words, they must be connected in some manner to the deep, or deepest water, in the area being fished. The fish must have a visible path ALL THE WAY in their movements and migrations from the deep water (their normal sanctuary from an ever changing environment),  to the shallows and vice versa. There may be many "structures, "breaks," and "breaklines" in any body of water, but only a few may be so related to deep water that the fish will use them.

Area 1 - DAM

Area 2 - SIDE FEEDER STREAM CUT THROUGH THE FLAT

Area 3 - SUBMERGED ROADBEDS

Area 4 - HUMP

Area 5 - CAUSEWAY

Area 6 - FENCE/HEDGEROW

Area 7 - ROCKY REEFS

Area 8 - SADDLE

Area 9 - BARS

[1] - a "break" is any anomaly attached to the bottom that acts as a roadmark for fish the move about. It can be anything from a rock to a sunken boat, but the fish see it and know it's there, keeping them on track. 

[2] - a breakline is a measurable change of depth. Picture the lines on a hydrographic that illustrate the depth changes of the bottom. That is a breakline. 

Fish Attractant Scents

(been saying  this about oil vs. water based scents for a long time.)

MAKING SENSE OUT OF FISH SCENTS 

Facts  About Fish Attractants

Fish scents took the fishing industry by storm back in the 1980s. Fisheries biologist Bob Knopf wrote numerous articles on various scientific topics of interest to fishermen, including the effectiveness, and limitations, of scent products. The following excerpts from this 1987 Fishing Facts article still pretty much stand to this day nearly 40 years later.

🎣 First and foremost, for a scent to work, THERE HAVE TO BE FISH IN THE IMMEDIATE AREA. If we fish in nonproductive areas, the best of anything won't help us.

🎣 Secondly, there are simply times when the fish are so inactive or turned off that the best angler using the best technique will have a tough time catching them.

🎣 Lastly, there's a lot of confusion on fish scents. Two key factors determine a scent's effectiveness. 

1. First it must contain substances that smell attractive to fish. These substances will be even more efficient if they stimulate the fish to become active and feed. 

2. Secondly, once the scent smells good, it must also disperse in a manner so that fish can smell it.

🎣 Here's where a problem occurs with some scents. Some scents are "oil-based." They do not mix in water. You can test to see if a scent is oil-based by dropping some on the water surface. If it floats, as an oil slick, it's oil-based. If it spreads out as a cloud it's water-soluble, which is what we want.

🎣 Oil-based scents work only once the fish takes them into their mouth or touches them. These appeal to the fish's sense of taste which will usually cause the fish to hold a bait longer, allowing more time to set the hook. They can't, however, be smelled at any distance by fish.

Photo: Ray Hansen with crappies from the same Fishing Facts issue, and sporting a Berkley hat. Berkley was at the leading edge of fish scent research back then, and is still a leader in that area today.

Fish The Hot Spots

 TYPICAL HOT SPOTS

The fine drawing by Wiley Miller, following, shows typical hot spots - places where big fish are caught on nearly every lake. You will want to save this sketch and refer to it again and again - it contains most of what you need to know to find the fish. Finding these spots, however, is a different matter…

Feeder Stream. In spring fishing, this water is often a few degrees warmer than the lake just after the ice is out, when the lake is 39 to 45 degrees. Then, too, moving water has more oxygen than a newly thawed lake. All species will be attracted. Walleyes will run up the stream early, if the stream is available. This feeder stream may be small, shallow, swift or slow, but in the early season it's a fish magnet.

F & F-1 common drop-offs may be near shore or not. Often too, at the weedbed edge. Fish will NOT be all along such drop-offs. They will identify with some break on the drop-off. You will have to fish the entire drop-off by drifting, trolling, or casting until you hit a fish or two.

Then mark that exact spot. Mark it well.

E. Weed beds. To date we haven't said much about these because most fishermen have always camped on them, fished incorrectly and got nothing. We had to break this habit. Now we can ease you back in, the right way, and we will.

C. Vertical Drop-offs. Generally these look simply great and generally these produce almost nothing-some exceptions of course, but FEW.

C-1 Break on Vertical Drop-off. Can be good. It will have well-defined boundaries. Only by catching fish will you find it.

Other Coded Spots have fish potential and are typical of spots on most lakes in most states. They illustrate a principle. A little imagination and logic will transfer them to your lake.

Uncoded Water - Empty! Except for roving schools of white bass, stripers, crappies, etc. Even these will be governed by undetected structure of some sort.

Suspended Fish-Experts know that Kentucky bass and some other species do suspend-Walleyes do too, at times, though not often. But again, suspended or not - they relate to structure.

Weed Beds—On some lakes weeds are structure. Gravel patches or other breaks in Weed beds are fish magnets. Cannot tell it all in one article a book could be written on weed fishing—and weed fishing generally is not the best. However, at times it's well worth a good try.

A & A 1 Underwater Points often, NOT always indicated by shoreline projections. Often these points have surprising potential. Your LO-K-TOR will sometimes surprise even the local guides, and your fish will surprise the local experts.

B-Sunken Island: almost always good at spots-sometimes on cloudy days fish will roam all over them.

B-1 Sunken Island approach: we put this in as an example of small spots that MAY hold the school while the rest of the structure is empty.

C. Vertical Drops comment as above.

D. Boulder or Boulder Patch: fish, after migrating, may hide under these.

E. Weeds: too big a topic and too complicated for now.

George Pazik, 1970

PANFISH: Double Jig

THE DEADLY DOUBLE JIG RIG…Game Plan For PILES OF PANFISH

Tips from Spence Petros for using this technique to cover water (troll) and locate schools of panfish. Just as effective today as it was back then.

Fig. 2

FIGURE 2 - When trolling to find panfish, floating markers are a big help. A marker is thrown - "A", soon as contact is made with a good-size panfish. Troll back and forth through the school as shown. Often the school will move - "B". Troll around marker in widening circles. If contact is made again, toss out another marker.

MORE TIPS

👉 I generally troll to find panfish. And if a concentration can be pinpointed, casting will then be in order. Trolling covers far more territory than casting; plus, it allows much better control of your lure's speed and depth.

👉 Since I'm always trying to stack as many factors in my favor as possible, a double jig rig is used. This setup allows me to test different colors, sizes, dressings and actions, plus it produces quite a few doubleheaders, which are always extra fun.

👉 If I'm searching for a mixed bag, a crappie-type jig of 1/16 to 1/8-oz. will be used on the short line, while a smaller, bluegill-type offering (nymph, wet fly, extra-small jig) will be tied on the longer line.

👉 A split-shot above the three-way swivel replaces the jig weight if a second fly or nymph is used.

👉 Clear-water lakes usually mean a little deeper presentation, especially when the sun is bright.

👉 In clearer lakes, particularly when some sun is out, white or pearl plastic bodies with pink jig heads are top crappie colors on jigs. Under reduced water clarity or light conditions, chartreuse, yellow and lime get the nod.

👉 For numbers of the sunfish family, dark colors like black and brown best imitate the forage they stuff themselves with much of the year.

Fishing Facts, 1986