I received the Kevin Van Dam’s Bass Strategies book for Christmas. I finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed the read. I have purchased fishing videos, rented, and borrowed fishing videos from the library in the past and I have read many articles from magazines but I feel like this book provides way more information than those other media.
The book is available at BassPro, Amazon, and other locations for around $20. It has around 200 pages and broken into 24 chapters. The book discusses myths, structure and cover, forage, patterns, lures, and lots of common and tough fishing situations like heavily pressured water and dealing with cold fronts.
I started to highlight key text but quickly gave up as the book is full of “nuggets”. So I will just plan to read the book again a few times before April.
Here are a couple of snippets to give you an idea of the books content:
“Therefore, if you believe the pattern calls for bass to be on points, it becomes a matter of choosing the best points in the lake. You can eliminate some of the points by simply studying the map and assessing the structure around them. For example, I prefer long, tapering points that drop into creek or river channels, because these provide the bass continual access to feeding flats and deep sanctuaries. Once I’ve narrowed the list to those, I look for points that, in addition to dropping into a channel, sit adjacent to a large shallow bay.”
and
“The water temperature has nothing to do with it, either. You hear anglers say that everything’s sluggish, so you should fish your lure accordingly. Water temperature has nothing to do with how fast a minnow or crawfish swims, but it does affect how often a bass will eat.”
and
“You don’t want to waste a precious day of fishing by trying to get bites doing what YOU THINK should work – only to discover you guessed wrong. It’s vital to keep an open mind.”