Partner or solo. Safety first!

Time of year.

Amount of time for the trip.

Ramp accessibility.

Prevailing weather patterns.

Not unusual for me to pull away from the house without yet having decided.  I'm lucky to have lots of options.   Sometimes wind plays a big factor.  Upcoming tournament schedule drives me to a lot of prefishing decisions.  Living on a lake much of the year now will certainly make the decision easier each morning now.

I usually just go to my secret spot.  

 

Usually go to the lake my boat's docked at unless I'm fishing for the GA Bass Slam.  I'll go to the place where the targeted species are with my kayak and a buddy.  We usually launch @ bridges and don't see anyone all day.

proximity and bass population .

I choose based on the next tournament. I’ll fish a minimum of 22 tournaments this year on 16 different lakes. 

I choose to fish somewhere if it has a propensity to hold big bass. I’ve stopped caring about fishing pressure or size of the lake. To me, the larger the lake and the more fishing pressure, the more I tend to learn anyways. I’ve been skunked so many times I don’t care about it. 

2 hours ago, Cbump said:

I choose based on the next tournament. I’ll fish a minimum of 22 tournaments this year on 16 different lakes. 

 

Cbump, your post made me laugh. We are sooo different. You go where fishermen cluster. I go where I'll be the only one. 

When you’re fishing 50000 acre lakes or bigger it’s easy to get away from people. 

1 hour ago, Cbump said:

When you’re fishing 50000 acre lakes or bigger it’s easy to get away from people. 

 

A 50,000 acre lake is beyond me as I paddle a puny, pokey canoe. I've scouted a 450-acre bog for 2023 and that intimidates me.

 

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

 

A 50,000 acre lake is beyond me as I paddle a puny, pokey canoe. I've scouted a 450-acre bog for 2023 and that intimidates me.

 

I paddled a canoe on a 60,000 acre lake during the 2022 bassmaster classic. If a lake is that big it’s got miles and miles and miles of protected coves way off the main channel 

Whoa! That's big water. I have paddle both Lakes Superior and Michigan, but in retrospect, that seems foolhardy. 

I live on it. Or one the bank anyway.

I'm lucky to live on one of the best largemouth fisheries in my area, in addition to the 100+ lakes within an hour and a half drive. There's quite a variety with that many individual bodies of water as well as species present in them. My tournament schedule and guide trips dictate a lot of my choices on where to fish, but I love to mix it up and explore new bodies of water or fish somewhere I haven't fished in a while. 

3 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

Whoa! That's big water. I have paddle both Lakes Superior and Michigan, but in retrospect, that seems foolhardy. 

Yeah I ain’t doing that haha. Reservoirs are vastly different than the Great Lakes with hundreds of coves and creek arms. I was on lake hartwell in SC . I’ve also canoed in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico but only briefly, went right back up the estuaries 

46 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Yeah I ain’t doing that haha. Reservoirs are vastly different than the Great Lakes with hundreds of coves and creek arms. I was on lake hartwell in SC . I’ve also canoed in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico but only briefly, went right back up the estuaries 

 

Yeah, but I was young when I did it. Y'know, an immortal.

20 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

 

Yeah, but I was young when I did it. Y'know, an immortal.

Yep. 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Been there. I still dabble from time to time, that’s me in the front 

Great photo. It conveys the sound and the fury.

11 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

Great photo. It conveys the sound and the fury.

That’s a screenshot from a video. Why did I not think to post the video???!!!!

 

And my wife paddling thru it too