Guiding You In Your Quest For More And Bigger Fish
It’s no secret that we love swimbaits here at MVF. In fact, the Netbait BK was selected as our bait of the year.
The reason is simple—they work, and they work well!
Nonetheless, you can always improve. In this video, I am going to show you three simple tweaks you can make to catch more bass on your next trip. I will warn you in advance—your thumb is probably going to get sore! [Read more…]
The “Kid” and I were discussing some of our recent fishing trips a few days ago. Inevitably, the conversation turned toward someone asking us if we had any “luck”? Now I have always believed that “luck”, is simply a meeting of opportunity and hard work.
When the two come together, you increase your chances of being successful no matter what it is that you’re pursuing. In the case of fishing, there are what I like to refer to as my “Lucky Seven” rules. I follow these each and every time I get on the water because years of trial and error have borne these out to be the most important components for having good days fishing.
The first thing that I look at are seasonal patterns. Yes, these can vary by a few months depending on where you do your fishing but they tend to be one of those elements that are consistent no matter the location. Fish are going to spawn at some point during the calender year.
Our job as anglers is to spend the time doing the research to find out when this is going to happen in our area or the area we are going to fish. Once we know this, we can take a pretty educated guess as to when we’ll see pre and post spawn conditions as well. Knowing this information guides us in where and what to use when we get out there.
Next for me is fishing key structural elements. The ones that I focus on are, points, creek channels, humps, ridges and flats. Most bodies of water have some mix of these topographical features that have historically, consistently held fish. Depending on the seasonal pattern that we’re subject to, these structural features will each, in turn, hold fish.
Now I like to zero in on water temperature and clarity. Not only will they affect what lure choices we should use but they can have an influence on the seasonal patterns by either delaying them a bit or accelerating them. All of this information is readily available either on the internet or by calling a local tackle shop ahead of the trip to see what they have recorded recently.
Just a little hint here: If you can find a tackle store that guides use, they generally will have more up to date and accurate info on the specifics water conditions. Don’t be shy about asking. More often than not, they are happy to bring you up to date.
Have you ever heard the old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Sometimes you get out there and just don’t find what you were expecting to. Hey, this is fishin’ not catchin’. Here again, preparation is the key to overcoming something unexpected. Having the ability to cover the entire water column efficiently is going to save you a lot of headaches when Murphy’s Law pops up.
We always need to have lures on hand, in different color patterns, that will serve this purpose. Once you’re keyed in on what the fish want, you may only use a couple of baits all day. But to get to this point, you have to be ready to make adjustments on the fly and a well stocked tackle box or bag is part of the antidote for rapidly changing conditions.
Sometimes it’s easy to figure out what the fish are feeding on and sometimes, it’s near impossible. However, if we can feel fairly comfortable that we’ve got this one figured out, it will further narrow our lure choices. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the water and had some folks come up to me asking me what I was using to catch fish. I make a habit of showing them and then asking them what they’re using.
Man, you should see how far off base some of these people are with their choice of baits. It’s no wonder they aren’t catching fish when they’re throwing something that is completely unlike anything the fish are feeding on.
This one is really up to personal preference but I like the old adage, “start early and stay late”. I’m sure that there is something to all the so-lunar tables and best fishing times and other more ethereal studies. But for me, I kinda figure that the fish are going to feed at some point in the course of a day and I want to have a line in the water when that happens. Pretty simple really.
On top of that, you can get more information about a particular body of water by spending more time on it. You may notice something after having been on the water several hours, that just wasn’t apparent when you got there. This could be the key to turning your whole day around by giving you a piece of information that you didn’t have prior.
A case in point, this summer I went night fishing and just wasn’t getting bit on top-water even though it was the perfect time of year for it. All of the sudden I saw a school of bait fish break the surface and then disappear. I immediately tied on a soft plastic jerk bait and caught a fish on my first cast! The rest of the night, all I did was was throw the jerk and would up with over a dozen fish.
And finally, when the going gets tough, use your confidence baits. Yes we here at MVF fish a LOT of different lures during the course of the season. But when the bite shuts down or we’re in a whole new environment, we reach for the lures that have proven they catch fish. For whatever reason, your “confidence lures” are the ones that tend to get you the most strikes because you are the most proficient with them.
Don’t minimize this part of the equation. If you know that you can use a particular bait to consistently get bites, by all means, use it!
There it is folks, our “Lucky Seven”. Just because these have been successful for us doesn’t mean that there aren’t other methods out there that may work for you. But if you tend to get a little scattered before you hit the water, narrowing things down in this way just might help you to have more fun and catch more fish.
And hey, when all else fails, you may just need to get a lucky fishing hat!
See ya’ on the water …
When we posted the 2012 FLW Tour schedule a while back, I was understandably excited. After all, the big day is going to be happening in my back yard.
Not long after that article, I took a trip out to Lake Lanier to target some Spotted Bass. Because the water level was so low at the time, I was able to get a few pictures of some things that not a whole lot of people know about. Lake Lanier features man-made structure piles specifically so bass can congregate and ambush their prey.
Obviously, these are going to be fantastic places to fish, as they provide everything a bass would ever need. In fact, if we go back in time a little more than a year, we will see just how productive these little brush piles can be.
In 2010, Kevin Hawk narrowly qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup. Knowing that the tournament would be held on Lake Lanier, he made a bold move.
He decided to pack his bags, and move to Georgia 9 months ahead of the tournament so he could practice all day every day. He found a place for rent on Craigslist, threw everything he could in his truck and boat, and made the 2,500 mile drive across country.
He still fished on the FLW Tour during this time, but did so as a co-angler. All told, he was fishing 4-5 days a week on Lanier, specifically searching out these man-made brush piles. And it payed off!
On the final day, when his closest competitors barely cracked double digit bags, Hawk weighed in 14lbs. 13 oz.
His strategy was to run and gun from brush pile to brush pile—spending no more than 7 minutes at a spot.
By now, you are probably curious as to what these brush piles look like. Check out the picture on the right. I was able to get this photo
There are a ton of these in Lake Lanier
because the lake levels were down on a recent trip.
Of course, they don’t all look this way, but most of them are intentionally placed in such a way as to create a perfect place for bass to hide, live, and ambush their prey. They will also attract a lot of sunfish, which the bigger bass will eat just as happily as they will a blue-back herring.
When Kevin Hawk moved from California to Georgia in preparation for the Cup, we new about these piles. He spent months and months, and hours and hours on the water finding as many of these as he could find.
He was the only angler on the water following this strategy—a strategy he developed from months and months of dedicated practice.
It is safe to say that as much research goes into being a successful angler as anything else. These aren’t just a bunch of guys drinking beers and fishing all day—they are dedicated to the sport, and they work hard to get the success they have.
Guess what? Lake Sidney Lanier is not the only lake in the world that features these types of man-made structures. Lots of lakes, maybe some you’ve fished time and again, have this kind of structure.
For as long as people have been fishing, there have been a group of people trying to preserve fishing for the next generation, and helping mother nature help anglers is a good way to do that.
Do a Google search of your favorite lake. Look for anything you can find. Search for man-made structure, or anything else that is published that would help fish hold, and attack their prey.
When I did this, I found the Blueridge Resevoir (one of my favorite local smallmouth fisheries) had at least 20 man-made structures consisting of large plastic tubing and other items. They are like jungle gyms for fish!
Finding these in your local lake, whether you fish in tournaments or not, will help you have a lot more fun on the water, and catch a ton more fish!
Here at MVF we like to take the time to go through the mail and try to answer those questions that have a recurring theme to them. One
With the right approach, shore fishing can be great
of those, especially lately, is regarding what the shore bound angler can do, this time of year to catch some fish when they can’t get to the deeper water because they don’t have access to a boat. [Read more…]
We had another great question from one of our readers that we felt we needed to address. This gentleman asked why, when he went fishing the other day, he caught lots of fish in areas that seemed as though they had been disturbed by something.
He also wondered why his usual spots didn’t produce as well as these area that obviously had been subject to some kind of unusual, seemingly destructive grinding of the vegetation. Without any pictures to see exactly what he was talking about, we’re going to do our best to explain what most likely occurred. [Read more…]
It Gets Tough In The Summer
Some of our readers have written in telling us about how incredibly hot it has gotten in their area lately and this has shut down the bass. One gentlemen in particular has asked if there is anything that he can do differently to wake em’ up.
I gotta tell you that we have the same problem here in So-Cal. It’s as though we skipped spring and went from cold, wet days immediately into very hot, clear days. When this happens there are a few things that I have found that generally speaking, will put some fish on your thumb. [Read more…]
Well folks, it’s getting quite a bit cooler around here these days and from what I’ve been seeing in the news, it’s getting down right cold in a lot of places.
Now I know that the weather alone isn’t going to stop us true addicts from going fishing but it sure is going to make us switch some of our lures out to ones that we believe will be more effective during the end of this year and the first part of next. So here goes for what I will have tied on for my next fishing [Read more…]