Paul Roberts

Glad you guys are steering this discussion. Things were getting complicated. Bridge, to euchre, to go fish and hearts. How about... 52 card pick up?

Yeah I guess if you take away the angler, there's not much left is there? And no reason for this website. Guess we'd all be talking about euchre or something.

The fall turn-on occurs on my bluegill-based waters too. These waters also lack creek arms. But there is a strong shallow bite that appears to be associated with the fall in temps. These fish can be very shallow. Buzzbaits, topwaters, lipless, swimjigs are all favorites. I keep a rod dedicated to a buzzbait at that time. Sun angle is low enough by then that I don't need a surface ripple. It's no myth. But... you gotta be there. As GG mentioned, it (the initial cool-down) can be short-lived. Later in the fall, when things have cooled further, I've done well around dead vegetation by gliding swim jigs on the outside edges in shallow vegetated ponds. Interestingly, through the summer the bass would be IN and over those beds, and SBs and plastics ruled. After the weeds died, and turned brown and slimy, the bass would drop to the outside edge and suspend there. It appeared that bluegills were exposed due to the dying weeds and bass were making good. With the cooler and open water, swim jigs fished in glides and falls worked great. It was a strong pattern. On larger deeper waters, the bass and ‘gills, and anglers too, move out with stable water and live weeds. Stuff to chew on. Keep at it.

GANGGREEN says it well. The fall turn-on is a result of falling water temps that bring lots of prey fish into the shallows and activate bass. In shad-based fisheries, shad tend to come up into the cooling creek arms at this time. Seems the hotter the late summer the better the cool down bite. It happens when it happens. I've seen "summer" stretch well into September. Then... as temps cool further, preyfish and bass move back out. In vegetated waters shallow weeds die back and bass will collect at remaining green weeds out deeper. One of the best times of year for large bass since they are now exposed and collected up. But finding consolidating fish is your first order of business. As you can imagine, lure types change across this time.

Here's the take home from Stratos20SS's post:

GREAT post.

We agree. We’re pretty much doing the same stuff out there. I'm just hashing out the logic. Ah! Baitfish push things into the activity/aggressive feeding part -the flipside of the location trump card. -We can sit over suspended, sleeping bass for some time without catching. We've got a location, we've got fish. But a lot of good it's doing right then. -We can sit on a good prey location where the prey has all the advantages, while the bass await opportunity. -We can sit on great structure/cover combination -sans vulnerable bait and feeding bass. What we look for is when and where all three come together in time and space. This tends to happen at certain “locations”, I believe these are the ambush points / carnage zones / strike zones, however they manifest themselves: depth, angle, breaks (structural elements, cover, current, mudlines, …) Then there is presentation… No, there is no one trump card. It’s a process. It feels best when we have enough of a handle on what’s going on and what the terrain looks like underwater to be there at the right time and place. A lot of times we just stumble on such things. Imagine how many we miss by mere feet, or minutes? Those tournament results are indicators of just how big a job we have when we leave the dock. Now you've got me considering the definition of "trump card".

Agreed. Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy, getting dejected and coming up with all the reasons why we aren't getting bit. In persevering, I've had amazing turnarounds happen. Often it's not just the fish turning on but me finding feeding fish or a presentation that flips the switch.

So... in pond #1 bass activity/aggressiveness ("the bite") and/or versatility trump location. But in pond #2, location trumps. But, what's the diff between #1 and #2 -bass activity? Or what the angler has (or is willing) to offer that day? I do the same thing btw. If I'm not catching in one pond, I'll hit another. Some ponds I've yet to figure out, at least under certain times of year (winter in particular). Location in some ponds, or days, simply means finding water that fits the gear I have with me, or my druthers, rather than what's possible if I'd brought the whole tackle store with me. There are only so many hours in a day, and it seems the Earth always rolls over too fast. That's what's often interesting about tournament results -just how many patterns the whole field can come up with on any given day.

Wow. Lotsa good thoughts here. Interesting, Catt fishes BIG water mostly and on such waters its possible to fish where there aren't any. I fish small waters and it's rare not to have any bass under my casts most of the time. Versatility is key, and can get bites where others fail, and practically speaking this is where most fishing lies. We are almost always fishing to subsets of bass across a range of activity levels. We can't rely on 80% of the fish biting, so much of the time we are working on duping the neutrals. So... I'm swayed and am changing my trump card(s): location with versatility. I know I chose two, as there isn't just one that trumps all except maybe that the bass are still breathing. Location for me often pertains to a very small scale -the ambush points, the carnage zones, the strike zones, where approach, placement, angle, and timing can make all the difference. That said, I spend the majority of my time looking for bass that have a pattern of their own going. Feeding bass on a specific pattern of their own is where I make a killing. Stealth is a big factor in my waters too. I have always said, the first order of business is: "don't spook em". If you do, (and I must say many do, and are unaware of it), the rest can be moot.

Hmmmmm... that's a big question. I'm going to go with bass activity level or aggressiveness in feeding. It's really helpful when the fish meet me halfway. Cures a lot of ills.

Start off where you did before. Bass may still be there. But have back up plans.

I love my small waters. They range from little one acre ponds to 100+ acre irrigation reservoirs. They contain all types water types, requiring versatility to meet all that potential, and many are public and heavily fished. I still burn gas though, running pond to pond.

Well now, there's the problem! That's when they bite the least!

Yeah, gotta start somewhere. Now, was the wind from the east??

Nothing wrong with a theory. Unless it's wrong! But then come the proofs. The natural world is a complicated place. Trying to distill it to single factors or dichotomies is (besides what we humans automatically do) a recipe for disappointment. Things are almost always more complicated the deeper you look. Make your theories AFTER you've fished. Works out much better that way. Until the next time you fish!

X2 Wind has some real advantages, and some real disadvantages. But... they are in relation to real things: current, temperature, lighting, floating cover, prey availability or vulnerability, ... Sometimes these weigh in heavy. We cannot answer why you caught fish where you did based on wind direction alone. Wind may have had nothing to do with it. Some thoughts: -It's often easier to fish and detect takes in calm air. -On a small pond there are probably bass that use all sides of it, although I do have ponds that have the majority of fish on one area or side only, bc that's where the prime habitat (food, security, winter quarters, spawn substrate, ...) is. -I also have ponds that have areas that require certain techniques that I prefer not to fish, or am not equipped for that day. Lures aren't food. I mean, one lure, tackle, and technique may not work all the way around a given pond -even a small one. I often see two approaches to all that potential: Fish your tackle/strengths and pass up the water that doesn’t fit. Or, bring the tackle shop with you and cover it all.

Often, yes. If they are biting, I'm not one to argue, as long as my catch rate and quality are satisfying. If not, I start looking beyond the initial drop -fishing casts out for a longer period. Being ready to detect takes on the initial drop is something I have to be purposefully aware of though, as they can be easy to miss. Keeping in touch with your lure, where it is at all times is important, but often esp so on the initial drop. Again, dropping lures are a real attractor/trigger for bass and this is so even beyond the initial drop. Make purposeful use of this trigger by fishing baits in pulls and falls, being ready for a take -often it comes at teh bottom of the drop. Takes can be just having your bait not make it bottom, (watching for slack), line movement, a tap, or mushy weight. I usually maintain slight tension on the drop, esp with heavy lures bass are apt to spit. (FC lines excel at semi-slack sensitivity.) With soft plastics that they'll hold longer I may have the luxury of “weighing the line” at the bottom of the fall, feeling for life or weight that indicates a fish. This also allows me to fish more slack in the drop, which allows the lure to fall more vertically –helpful in some places. How fast a drop can matter, which is a matter of lure sink rate and line diameter.

Very common. Lures don't fool fish most of the time. They have to do something special at just the right time. Splashdown can offer a suite of "special" -attractors and triggers: -The splashdown itself can be attractive to bass. This is the main reason it's suggested you wait for a bit before starting your retrieve with topwaters, waiting for the fish to get there. -The water's surface is an "ambush point", in two respects: it obscures your lure just enough that they don't get to see what's "wrong" with it. Secondly, and this is in operation with topwaters and when you are taking your bait out of the water (like for another cast) -it looks like the bait is about to escape. -Bass can see surprisingly well above the water. When they are aggressive, they can be attracted to the speed of a lure zipping through the air. They may chase it to the splashdown area, then smack it. -Bass LOVE falling baits. It's a trigger. Works beneath the water too. Pull the bait up, and then let it fall.

I too have no interest whatsoever in disrespecting people's beliefs. At the same time, I cannot help but be skeptical, to question things. As a university researcher I came to a number of rock solid conclusions (meaning hypotheses that should have stayed as such, but I had emotional stakes in -the urge to rationalize runs deep) that I saw crumble with new evidence, or maybe better, the new evidence simply revealed that there were deeper levels to the problem. I’ve had 'lack of a deep caution" beaten out of me. The enormity of it all –even within a narrow tightly controlled experiment– is overwhelming. And angling is, well, one lousy sampling method, practiced in a chaotic environment. Although I have "records" (30 some years worth of journals) I just don't have the data, or trust angling as a sampling method able to sort out all the variables that can affect catches, to say anything about moon phase. And even if I did tease out a statistic, I wouldn't trust it. The "methods" are just too inaccurate, inconstant, deceptive, and generally unreliable; and the environment too capricious. Does this mean that I've given up hope that we will figure it all out? No; I'm as human as the next guy.

I remember that article and it was VERY weak statistically. As I remember it, it called lunar influence 3 days either side of full and new, and the days of the quarter moons. That accounts for 16 days out of the 29.5day lunar cycle for 54% of the lunar month, which yielded 71% (if I remember right) of world record catches. Now, that's very weak in itself, regardless of sample size (which is tiny) but consider that this stretches across multiple species. There's nothing there. Then there was the Texas ShareLunker program data and the suggestion that catches were clustered around the full and new moons. I spent some time running statistics on that data and basically found that the 48% of the lunar month (3 days either side of full and new) yielded 50% of the catches. There was nothing there. (There's a rather long thread on here on BR going back to 2007, 2008?) Then, in a conversation with T9, he mentioned he'd looked at that data too, and found that the majority of those big bass were caught... on weekends. Am I remembering that right, Brian? Then there are all the sundry moon theories out there, many proposed by some very experienced anglers, that all argue for different parts of the cycle being critical. They can't all be right! Then, there were the 3 seasons I spent, not fishing, but observing and documenting the initiation of largemouth spawning in small ponds. While I could not say for sure whether the moons had influence (uncoupling it from other variables), I did find that bass could spawn directly in between full and new moons, associated with rapid heating –the heck with the moon apparently. What many neuropsychologists have discovered in a multitude of ways is that our brains are programmed to find patterns in the cosmos –even when they don’t exist. The explanation for such seeming foolishness is that, although it may not be smart in the short term, it is wise in the long. Better to notice opportunities than to miss them. We construct our sense of the world. And if it’s motivational, go for it. The one thing hope does best is keep us on the water.

Wow! Big question. First, like confidence, gut instinct works for those with experience to draw on. It doesn't work in reverse. No one was born knowing how to catch bass. You have to learn that. I’d suggest you read, watch vids, fish a lot, discuss. That's the process. Good questions to ask: -How do bass operate? What are their limitations? -What is bass habitat? Where is it on your waters? -What are the primary prey species in your waters? -What are bass, and prey, seasonal habits? And how does that look where you live? -How do conditions (sky, water, in particular) affect fishing? -What lure types fit where you fish? (the easy part) -How can you tune/alter lures to get them to fish right? (often the trickier part) If this is old news, then… I like the simplicity of Roadwarrior’s answer. "Fifteen minutes." You need to find active willing biters, and that may mean moving around a bit if you don’t know productive spots already. If you already do, you may need to adjust your presentations to get bit. Often you just have to wait for something to change –fish become active, fish move in, you hit the right speed or triggering in your lure. Do we ‘know” ahead of time? Not always. But if you understand bass, prey, water, conditions, you’ll have some ideas as to what directions you should head. The rest is up to the bass.

Seaweed isn't interested in you. It doesn't bite. It's actually very beautiful underwater.

OK... I guess the question doesn't seem to be "why do they freeze?"... it's "What do I do when they have a face full of weeds?" The answer is an easy one. As ClackerBuzz suggested, lip em first, then clear the weeds. Hanging a PB, with a mouthful of weeds, from the line is a disaster waiting to happen. Broken line, overstressed knot, lost fish, cut hands. Lip em first. As to the net, save your money. I've fished from shore quite a bit and never carried a net for bass. Bass come with a handy handle. The only time I've used a net is from a boat, a pier, where it's difficult to reach the fish, or when fly-fishing for trout in streams when it can be difficult to get a hold of slippery trout in turbulent currents.