Dock Talk: One Trick Ponies
- Published on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 09:57
- Written by Duncan Murfin
- Hits: 146
Gone are the days of bass fishing when you couldn’t go wrong throwing an in-line spinner or a crankbait in virgin bass waters across the country, but to cut it on many of our public dams - never mind enter the top echelon of our national rankings - you had better be versatile.
One of the most common excuses at tournament weigh- ins, and also after so many social outings , for being served up a big doughnut is: “ I just couldn’t buy a bite today, we were on big fish on weightless jerkbaits last week but today they just disappeared!” Besides environmental conditions changing since the last visit to the dam, throwing the same baits that worked a week ago, or fishing the same spot that produced fish earlier in the season doesn’t always result in landed bass. Bass are not creatures of habit, no matter how predictable they might seem at times, so how do certain anglers consistently catch fish every time out?
There are no hard and fast rules but versatility is one of the biggest contributors to bass angling success. In the post season analysis of the FLW & Bassmaster Elite tournament trails in 2010, which covered the entire U.S. from east to west coast and everything in between, anglers were forced to be more innovative - fishing on venues ranging from deep, clear water to ultra-shallow muddy conditions, in every bass fishing season imaginable, including pressure from local anglers who after tournament hours were zoning in on patterns the pros had been running. Highly regarded anglers who had become synonymous with fishing one technique all year round begun to falter, failing to adapt to new power dropshot techniques and throwing big swimbaits and football jigs offshore. They dropped down in the rankings and a few completely had to retire from professional bass fishing due to lost sponsorships and endorsements. Yet when analyzing the end of year results for the 2011 season, several of the anglers who had done the worst in the previous year were once again atop the leaderboard - they had gone back to the drawing board and learnt new ways to apply the techniques which they had been trumped on.
What does this all mean to local anglers? Well, blanking a few times on a dam is nowhere half as bad as needing to find a new career, but it does highlight the need to be versatile when out on the water. In the immortal words of Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result” – to continue throwing a shallow running crank all day in exactly the same colour and the same spot without getting a bite is basically insane - let the fish tell you what they want. But what if you picked up that crank and threw it in among the nastiest cover you can imagine, or alternating to two completely different baits to firstly get bass to give away their position with a reaction bait, and then slowing down to catch them with something more finesse. It might sound like “junk fishing”, but the objective of being versatile doesn’t necessarily mean throwing the entire tackle box all in one day, it,s simply applying tried and tested techniques in a new way.
Only one of the problems associated with bass fishing is that just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they throw you a curveball - so the next time you’re out on the water and want to pick up that one bait you have utmost confidence in, or fish the spot you hammered them on last week, try something a little out of your comfort zone, and you might just be surprised with the results!
Catch you on the water…
