Spent from 9 to 3 PM doing some of the above with the wife. I had forgotten how complicated throwing a bait out, teasing it back, setting, the hook, and fighting a fish back to the boat can be.
I had to shift gears from grumpy old man to teacher today. The end result is she says she won’t give up, and promises to let the ones that got away not make her forget that she needs to be ready for the next one. She kind of acts like a kid with here first ice cream cone everytime she gets a fish on. I hope that spirit stays with a little less abandon.
She is already a good power fisherman so if she can get the light, slow stuff, like today down. She will definitely be a good partner. She has already kicked my but on Northern/Musky for sometime. It is so hard to teach the tiny differences between a fish on every other cast, versus a fish every ten casts. The person your teaching pretty much just has to take your word on it. After seeing it live and in person again and again pretty soon anyone is a believer and starts seeking the little details.
So here’s how we catch most of our shallow rock finesse fish.
First of all I have said it several times and I will keep repeating it… in shallow rocks you will catch large bass in water that you can’t believe even covers their bodies. The almost perfect cast/pitch/flip is onto the face of the out of water rock just behind your target. This takes away the noise of entry on the calm days. It also falls almost straight down into the strike zone. In order to accomplish this with any control you probably need to be within 10 feet of your target out from shore, or parrallel to the shore about the same distance away. Much farther away and you don’t have the control you need to slither the bait, in and around and down the rocks without constantly snagging. Especially in a competition getting more than one snag for every 15 or so casts is to many. We have found probably the best lure is a tube with a specialized tube jig head, second would be a bulky or flutter grub on a very light jighead.
Because of the light lures and finesse goals we have gone to a 6’6″ or 7′ fiberglass poles, with a spincast reel with 6 0r 8# Stren Hi Vis mono,(those of you that already use some type or manufacturer of Hi Vis line know you can see nips, pickups, and bites many times before you you feel them. If you pick the right rod you will find a great balance of flexibility,(fish doesn’t feel the rod, the rod is able to absorb the bull dozer runs that shallow fish make, you have to move it a little to put the backbone to work, so you aren’t constantly setting the hook in snags like you so with a graphite rod)and fighting backbone/power. I have tried about 20 different rods and believe it or not the best one so far sells for less than $10. at your local Walmart. Shakespeare also makes a Field and Stream series every couple years that has always been a light jig, big fish favorite of mine for both walleye and bass. I doubt many will believe the sensitivity of inexpensive fiberglass. I guess the most impressive part is a 4#er seems only a little harder to land than a 2.5#er because the rod obsorbs the fight of the fish. With fiberglass I don’t worry anymore about ripping a fish of in current.
Back to technique. These fish from the food they spit up or the minnows that often spray near then to be feeding on crayfish up in the rocks or lurking in ambush for minnow swimming by. So I use two basic returns to the boat… the hop/squirt of a crayfish or a pendelum swing/slide like a baitfish swimming by. In shallow rocks that don’t protrude out from shore very far the Bass seem to be bottom huggers. If I lose close proximity to the bottom my hit ratio goes way down.
Here’s the truly amazing and awesome part. If you have picked the right location, you can fish the same 50 foot section constantly for an hour or more and keep picking Bass, run to another spot like it or two and an hour or so later be back at that location catching fish again. To be honest though finding and picking those spots boils down to just one thing. “IT’S ALL ABOUT TIME ON THE WATER”
I will be updating and adding and subtracting from this as the days go by on my website. I really need to make a video on this technique it is so vital, fun, and amazingly productive.
I gotta get an dictionary and a spellchecker!!!!!
