Paul Roberts

Yeesh. Now I'm sorry I posted. Shoulda let this one die. Ah, the veterans already know I'm a know-it-all. Since you mention it, I don't think your OP was taken out of context. You set up the context. It didn't really say a whole lot more than pay attention/don't cast randomly. There were more "I"'s than information in that post. What's a beginning angler to do with that? Just saying you know it all doesn't make you a know-it-all -even a know-somethin'. Don't get yourself banned; give -even a little- instead.

Hmmmmm... trying to distill this thread has been a challenge. But I think I get it. Easier, since I was out fishing yesterday. I know where my lure is at all times, from cast to re-cast: how far the cast, how high or low it flies, it's angle to the sun, exactly where it's headed (often a matter of inches), the lure's relation to structure and cover (distance, angle), splashdown, pause interval (if at all), line bow with breezes or currents, line angles (rod position), where in the water column the lure is, retrieve speed, triggers imparted, and any info imparted through the line, or seen in or at at the water's surface, etc...etc.... Yesterday, I located a pod of feeding bass in a dying milfoil patch revealed by two wakes. I caught 4 there, and none in the surrounding expanse of milfoil. It's all about noticin' stuff. It helps to know what to look for. When you do, you'll find it can pay off to notice just about everything.

Buzzbait time!!!!!

Yeah, going slower in action is a plus with jerkbaits. I tend to use jerks in more open water (although the streamlined lip on the X-Rap can get through weeds surprisingly well). Ultimately, I like a stiffer tip for jerks, which also helps in strike detection; many jerkbait takes can be those soft mushy ones.

Yes, continuing to reel through is a great response and can result in solid hookups, on the majority of good committed crankbait bites. For someone new to crankbait fishing that is great advice. When you can slow down and do that you have taken the next step. The bites I'm talking about are what may feel like a little peck, or a mushy weight; and they can eject very quickly. Some of my crankbait fish are caught as though I'm fishing a jig. "Peck" Pop! (instant hook set). Wait a moment and they are gone. "Was that a fish?" You bet it was.

Don't want to single you out gc (very much appreciate your posts) but your comment is a perfect jump-off. IME, waiting for the rod to load can give up a lot of fish. With 'glass, one may not even know they were there. Nice when they "glom on" but they don't always do that. They can take cranks a number of ways, and they don't hold them for long.

It's almost certainly situational. A big commotion, or a new presence, could put fish off a bit. But they'll probably get used to it. Fish and let us know.

Hmmmm... I don't think you have to get carried away. A softer rod definitely helps keep hooks in but I still much prefer graphite for the sensitivity. I use standard M to MH action rods (depending on cover) and do fine with them. A flexible tip is a help but some backbone comes in handy -esp when ripping weeds. I would simply avoid really stiff rods. Do use, and keep sharp, quality hooks. The stretch in mono helps too. Beyond tackle, fighting technique is important. Keep a tight line (the rod bent) and don't rush them like you might with a large gapped soft plastic or jig hook. Be extra careful when the fish gets close bc as the line shortens things get more critical in terms of tension. When they get close I watch for how well the fish is hooked and react accordingly. I also "lead" the fish to keep even tension prior to landing. I'm also esp attentive for boat-side dashes (when the fish senses you, the boat, or the surface) and for leaps and react accordingly. Speed (and changes in) is a part of triggering and you often have to play around to see what works best at a given time. And no you don't have to fish a CB fast. I often do particularly well fishing them as slow as a jig feeling my way through cover and deciding when to pause, accelerate, float up, etc... Lastly, some days the fish are tentative and hookups can be poor with a higher loss rate. If I see fish hooked on the tail hook a lot it may indicate biting and pecking rather than engulfing. Sometimes I feel aborted attacks -'slaps' or 'rushes'- without hookups. These things tell me something is amiss with my lure or presentation. Or that the bass are just low in energy. Time to adjust.

Yeah, random casting tends to get you random results.

Some thoughts: -You may have had a particularly good hatch year for pike last year or a couple years ago. -Cooling temperatures can spark pike. -Bass may not avoid small pike, unless the pike are big enough to eat them. Big pike and hammer-handles live separate lives. As suggested above by stepchild try moving further outside the cover as small pike like to stalk and ambush within dense cover. -There are short periods when pike turn on and I never figured out why. In some of the waters I regularly plied, some days pike were on. I learned to adjust tactics: No flash (forget the rapalas, and anything with spinner blades; chartreuse and white possibly too as ClackerBuzz suggests). Fish slower (as desmobob says) and with more changes in direction -pikes are more apt to prefer a target that is moving more consistently -something taught me years ago in pickeral filled waters. The best way to catch pickeral then was with a silver Johnson's Silver Minnow weedless spoon chucked and reeled straight in through the thick stuff. Go to the edges and fish jigworms falling for the bass.

It's a part of fishing, but something I try to avoid by refining my gear to minimize damage. Fish are beautiful creatures –I appreciate every one– and disfiguring them just detracts from the experience. Hook gap is the major culprit in piercing eyes, and spinnerbaits and buzzbaits are probably the worst. Lots of bass lures have large gapped hooks, but on spinnerbaits the shank tends to be long and the hook point rides upright, more often hooking fish in the upper jaw, sometimes deeply. In some waters, where the bass are generally smaller, I'll use smaller SBs with a smaller hook. The other problem with SBs, esp the older models (I have a bunch) and those with cheaper hooks, have extra large barbs on them, which makes unhooking both difficult and more destructive. So I bend the barbs down quite a ways. Many good hooks nowadays have small or “micro” barbs and these hold well and make unhooking less traumatic. Many jigs use large gapped hooks, esp the Flippin’ variety, and they ride upright too. But they more rarely stick eyes, possibly bc jig hooks tend to be shorter shanked but also possibly due to the way bass strike and handle jigs, placing most in the corner of the jaw, inside the gill covers, or near the front of the upper jaw. Nostrils are at risk and I’ve not found much I can do about that. The other place I use large hooks is with soft plastics. Here again, the nature of the strike to hook-set sequence (often with some amount of slack at play) places hooks more randomly, with many in the corner of the jaws. I do get some gill and esophagus hooked fish and these are the most dangerous for the fish. I finally went barbless with many of my soft plastics and they catch and hold fish just fine. The exception is when using heavy sinker weights or when on jig heads. Jigs simply need the barb to hold due to the compact weight affixed to the hook allowing the fish leverage to throw it. The last place I finally went barbless was with trebled crankbaits and topwaters –excepting lipless cranks. Got sick of the mangled jaws they can produce. Barbless trebles hold just fine and are so easy, and safe, to remove it’s… amazing. Micro-barbed trebles are a good compromise, esp when spirited, high-jumping smallies are apt to be encountered.

Love it. I'll spin ye' a yarn -a true one: A buddy I used to muskie fish with on the St. Lawrence River had the biggest muskie ever come onto the floor of his boat one summer. It was 51-1/2" long and was caught by an inebriated kid on a 1/4oz Mr. Twister jig on a cheap Zebco spin-cast outfit.

I have lots of favorite rigs and baits, each used in different scenarios. To keep from being overwhelmed, start with a 6" worm -any style, any color you find appealing, and Texas-rig it. The T-rig will fish well just about anywhere. Branch out from there.

LOL. I can picture it. I've heard cuda's are beyond fast! Yeah, it's about impossible to pull the fly away from a fish that way. Might be a good technique for those topwater blow-ups -the one's that give you the heebie-jeebies afterwards. Never tried a Seaducer. But it looks similar to the Eelworm fly I caught the bass above on.

Yeah, fishing deep with fly tackle, IME, is more hassle than it’s worth. I’ve fished for stripers with full sink lines with leadcore heads and weighted flies. There’s little casting with so much weight needed to get that thick line deep. There are much more efficient ways of fishing deep. FF is a shallow water game. Nice. Triggering is the fun part: pops, splashes, boils, darts, falls, dead sticking, twitches, … A few flies will do it all. It’s not the fly as much as what you can do with it. Keel type streamers (using “keel” bend hooks to make the fly very weedless) are true must-haves esp for LMs in vegetation. I like bucktail bc it pulls a good meaty wake. I fish them primarily in short darting pulls that really excite bass –quick enough bursts to excite the predatory instinct, but not covering so much horizontal ground as to discourage chasers. Sometimes an all out rapid stripping will trigger really well though and this can be accomplished by tucking the rod under your arm and stripping with both hands, hand over hand. Set the hook by the line coming taught in your hand, then lift the rod. Feels weird at first but works very well.

Good question. Random? No. Location (seasonal or transient) and timing (seasonal, weekly trends, daily, hourly, even momentarily –i.e. conditions and circumstances) are the primary things I track. Ultimately, I can predict. That’s most apt to happen when I'm fishing every day and able to be on top of things. But every day or week away, or when on a new water, detaches me and I'm spending more time probing, searching, getting my bearings, and looking for an advantageous scenario. Over time I've come to recognize certain known patterns/events: certain insect emergences, preyfish activity, vegetation development and decline, water temperature trends, peri-spawn activity, etc that all have locational and timing elements. I might say "I'll go check on the gravel beds (location) for spawning 'gills (event) and see where we're at (timing)." It's great when I can understand my waters and bass well enough to predict things, recognize when events are imminent, but there's so much I'm not privy to. No, I'm not fishing randomly, although at times my catch rates could argue otherwise.

AJ brings up an interesting point. I'm a smaller water fisher too, and repeatable "patterns" are not what I'm after (beyond general seasonal "patterns" as Canyon explorer listed). In my waters the fish are more or less right in front of me. I'm not "looking for fish" or "patterns" I can duplicate by running to an identical spot elsewhere. Instead I'm getting a bead on activity levels and hoping for an active feeding/aggression scenario -essentially identifying and following the food chain. I'm doing what the bass are doing -hunting. They are looking for a concentration of prey -best if the prey too are feeding and therefore distracted. Weather and water conditions and certain events and circumstances may point the way. Other times things are "darn quiet" and I have to just probe away with appropriate presentations hoping to stumble on something. My journals consist of stories of what I think was going on. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes I can even see the predator-prey interactions. Other times, it's a one fish here and one fish there sort of thing. On the tougher days I don't believe is always bc I "didn't find a pattern" as much as the tempo of the day. Circumstances have to come together to make a great feeding situation for the bluegills, the bass, and following, for me. It's always enlightening to look at tournament results in which almost always someone finds a scenario ripe for a big catch. This is more likely on waters offering more real estate to ploy. On my small waters, I'll jump from water to water (on the hoof or in the car) bc the more real estate (habitat options) I have available to me, the more opportunities for catches there are -provided I have the versatility in tackle and presentations to recognize and cover them.

Mmmmmm... I'll hold to my original sentence, "a rod powerful enough to handle the bulky flies, cover, and fish power". One needs power in the rod to deal with largemouths in cover, like in conventional fishing. That 4wt rod may be fine for dink bass, but you'll be frustrated trying to throw the mouthfuls you'll want when targeting mature bass, and in trying to get fish up and out of cover. Imagine the guy in the video using a 4wt with those bass in those rushes, or in dense milfoil. By "bulky" I don't just mean weight, but wind resistance. Yes, the rod must handle the line weight which handles the fly. The flies I'm suggesting -one of which is shown in the video- cannot be thrown on much less than a heavy line. It's possible, if you only own a light rod, to make flies with reduced bulk that still offer some profile. But, that's pretty limiting -esp for LMs. They do appreciate a mouthful.

See below

Check out T-Motion "Alpine Bass" on youtube: No tips but pretty spectacular videography; best I've seen in fact. Tips: -Three must have flies: topwater (cork or packed deer hair), keel-hooked bucktail streamer, feather or yarn "worm". -Acquire a rod powerful enough to handle the bulky flies, cover, and fish power: 8 to 10wt. For more open water a 6wt will work. These are akin to a MH and M in conventional rigs. -FF can do a lot of what shallow water conventional fishing can do: just much slower paced. This does not mean you cannot use fast retrieves, just that you'll get far fewer casts in per day of fishing. Adjust your expectations accordingly. A FF story: I was an instructor at a (mostly trout focused) FF camp when, before instruction started for the day, a group of us spotted a large bass from a bridge spanning a narrow channel of the casting pond. The property owner said it was the biggest he'd seen in the pond. "I can catch that bass." I said, and borrowed a 9wt rod and a 7inch black "Eelworm" feather streamer from a fellow instructor doing a guest presentation on saltwater FF. I rolled the fly out beyond where the bass had been, let it free-fall to the bottom, and then let it lay for a few seconds, drawing up just enough tension to be able to watch the floating line on the surface. I then twitched the fly and received the responding twitch back I was sure would come. Thunk! The bass gave a good show, jumping even, and taped 19". Not a bad impromptu demonstration and introduction to FF for those students.

Exactly. I'd love to know just what the bass are doing and thinking, where ever I set anchor. But we're rarely privy to such perspective; thus, our mental representations of that world below -and the world around and above too. Glad we came from this planet 'cause it sure would be a rough go if we'd been flown in from some other galaxy. And it's mighty helpful that we have the neural plasticity to learn like no other critter. If you're catching fish it's a good idea to start consciously noticin', and it certainly does help to have knowledge and experience at your end of the line. The fish are busy at their end too. I guess it's all about noticin'.

Agree with the first part of that statement. A pattern is indeed a mental construct alright; what Patrick McManus called "noticin' stuff", meaning, it's connected in some way to what's going on below. How accurately varies with the noticer, and the complexity of the components. Much of it is educated guesswork. Regardless, if you are catching fish hand over fist with certain presentation, conditions, and locational elements being important factors, you are onto a pattern in the chaos. Ride it as long as it holds. Seems the simpler ones hold the longest, which may not say much about the noticing part but sure are fun.

Unfortunately, like so many things in the natural world, there just isn't a "once and for all". It's too complicated out there. We seek simplicity -which has its merits- but don't exist in such a world. The bottom line on "cold fronts" is that many factors associated with weather changes affect fish behavior. The trick is to know which one(s) are most important when. There are almost as many possible scenarios as there are hours in the day. There certainly are patterns out there, which is why we study the natural world, which in turn is why we have enormous brains. If yours is spinning, well it's doing what it's meant to do. If it hurts you're probably expecting simple, or single, answers to complex questions. Simplifying is the narrowing of real probabilities, not settling for less.

It's possible that if the pond is deep enough it may stratify. If so the deep water may be low in oxygen and chemically different from the upper water. In other words, the fountain may be creating turnover every evening. THe fact that the fountain's function is to keep "weeds" along shorelines (possibly algae?) makes me think the pond may be excessively fertile and prone to O2 deficits in the depths. It shouldn't affect the entire pond. There may be fish further away that you can target? If the algae/'weeds' is actually pushed to the shoreline the resulting matts may attract bass. I've had a few ponds where a lot of good bass pile up under wind-blown matts of algae. Some matts were just a foot or so wide but had good numbers of bass beneath. Some shorelines with matts will be the hotspots, others won't attract bass. Worth a look anyway. Another thought, if turnover is not the issue, is that the bass are taking advantage of some feeding opportunity resulting from the fountain that your techniques aren't covering. A third thought: How many times has this happened to you? Are you certain the fountain is the culprit? Interesting problem though. If you figure something out, let us know.

“Waking them up” CAN work: Lotsa ways it's been done.