First of all, fishing is mostly about location, location, location…. If you are not around fish, no matter how magic your bait is, you are not going to catch squat. That being said, my last two tournaments really have me thinking.
Roll back to end of June, my partner found the winning area and found those fish flipping craws to milfoil edges and pockets the two days leading into our tournament. Tournament day, we could hardly scratch a bite flipping and trying other baits along the edge. We find out at weigh-in, the winners clobbered them there on drop shots all day long. Shame on us for not making that adjustment, but we threw jig worms, small texas rigs and flipped the area hard, so we left.
This past Saturday, my partner and I show up on our starting spot, which is a shallow rocky/grassy point, 3-5ft deep; I am can barely get a bite on a mojo rigged baby ring fry and my partner is filling the boat on a flick shake. Mind you, the ring fry is what found these fish in practice and has been a perennial producer on this spot and lake. I rotate through some other baits, trying to get bit, finally landing on a Baby Brush Hog texas-rigged on a 3/16oz weight, I got half the bites, but every time I bowed up it was a 3-4lb largemouth.
Baby Brush Hog fished on Dobyns DX744
We talked about how easy it would have been for me to pick up a flick shake and likely join in on catching smaller keeper fish, but it seemed clear that we would have likely never tapped into the potential of the spot and likely not won with nearly 21lbs of bass.
So how many times have all of us fished through an area and either not get bit or caught small fish, but if we had started with or changed to a different lure might have unlocked it’s true potential?
I guess this is part of what makes fishing such a challenging and addictive sport and why we all have so much tackle!
Tight Lines,
Rich
www.RichLindgren.com
http://bassinblog.richlindgren.com
