What if it was than 5 feet at most

All kinds of interesting information is this one.  

 

I'm going to take a somewhat different approach ~ 

 

Very often the way I 'search' for bass is not to look for the fish themselves - at least not directly.

What works for me is to try to determine what the bass are eating at that time and where they go to do it.  Find the bait and the bass may not be too far away (except for smb which can & will travel a long way for a meal). 

 

  Suspended bass (especially motionless suspended bass) may not be eating and at the very least may not be very active - so I usually do not fish for them.  Unless they are schooling on bait - I'll just wave and go own my way.  

 

 If I had no idea what the fish were eating - I'd really be looking for a needle in a hay stack, especially on big water.  However, knowing which baits they prefer and when, I can seriously narrow down where to start looking.  So how can you know, that's part of the learning process as well.  Helps when your live well is full of half-digested 'whatever' at the end of the day.  Sort of narrows it down. 

 

So unless those bass are dining on tree bark - and you have a Strike King Treebark Squarebill - I'd be looking for whatever you believe they the bass are looking for and start fishing there.

 

Sometimes that means fishing a little deeper, but often times (like in the fall) the bait and the bass might not be very deep at all.

 

A-Jay 

 

2 hours ago, BigAngus752 said:

I understand now.  Fish it like I would if the trees weren't there.  That makes sense, thanks to all!

The stuff I'm referring to is not going to be on the map.  You're going to have to graph it, marking anything unusual with way points, as well as any fish you catch.  Once you get a bunch of way points and fish points, you may be able to see the larger picture.

 

2 hours ago, A-Jay said:

Suspended bass (especially motionless suspended bass) may not be eating and at the very least may not be very active - so I usually do not fish for them.

And this is what I spent a 1/3 of my day doing.  Thanks for the tips!

2 hours ago, A-Jay said:

Strike King Treebark Squarebill

Oh, and I ordered one of these.  

1 minute ago, BigAngus752 said:

And this is what I spent a 1/3 of my day doing.  Thanks for the tips!

Don't feel bad - That's how I learned it.

Doing stuff that doesn't work is another way of 'gaining experience'.

A-Jay