Find Hot Spots Easier

Detect Hot-Spots Before Launching Your Boat  
By Buck Perry
Fishing Facts, Feb 1985

Excerpt:

- The BASIC guideline of the structure fisherman, #1, says the bigger adult fish, in an area spend the greater part of their time somewhere in the deepest water - in the area - being fished. This is their true home base, their sanctuary, where they are quite comfortable, secure, and slowed in their activity.
From these sanctuary homes, they may migrate over known routes* to find food, depending on water and weather conditions.

* routes which are known to THEM.

In the case of reservoirs this deepest water - in an area - normally means the channels, and in the majority of cases, it means the main channel, or its main tributary channels.

- A structure fisherman's #2 guideline then says the fish will not move across an expanse of bottom devoid of visible, known, "signposts" (called, "breaks") just to reach some good-looking stick-up that might be over, "that-a-way" toward the shoreline. And by that, we mean 'good looking' to the angler.

Simply put, you can't expect these adult fish to travel a long way over featureless flats, just because you hope they will.

- Next, guideline #3 says when the fish DO move toward the shallows, the features of the bottom visible to them (aka, bottom structure, breaks, depth breaklines) which they use in their migration must go "all the way" from the deep water to the shallow water. 

The fish may not go all the way to the shallows, and in fact, its likely most won't go all the way every time they become active and moving -- BUT, the path they know and usually use does go all the way. 

- Another guideline, #4, says how deep the fish are, and how far they move toward the shallows is determined (or controlled) by the weather and water conditions at the time of their migratory movements.
The structure fisherman also knows the weather and water conditions are seldom good enough to get a great many fish, and especially the larger, adult fish, into the shoreline shallows.
They just simply prefer not to go into the shallows (8-10 ft. or less), if they don't have to. For them its unsafe and insecure, compared to their deeper water homes. 

However, when we catch them, its usually in the shallows, so we assume thats where they ALWAYS live. But we have STUMBLED upon a few of them there by playing a numbers game of lure casting. Meanwhile, the most of them are further out and have not come in.

With just these few guidelines we should begin to see or get a good interpretation of most all reservoirs... at least one good enough to catch fish consistently in whatever reservoir we find ourselves.

This "classic" bar has depth breaks and signpost features (breaks) which fish know and follow into the shallows

Not far to go from deep water - straight up, basically. 

The long flat is the problem here - featureless and without any guideposts for fish to follow. The edge of the channel is the likeliest pace to find them..if they are here at all