Lakes vs Rivers

One thing I have noticed over the years is that lakes continually hold quality fish in the same ” areas ” year after year and conmtinually produce ” winning” sacks of fish. It has almost gotten to the point that if you are not one of those fishing in these ” areas ” you honestly cannot consistently compete with the quality. Though the ” spots ” may change in a given area, the ” areas” themselves never change unless man introduces a drastic structure change.

MY experience on the river has given similar feelings. Although the areas may change over the years due to different flow patterns, this still seems to be very similar. Given till recently I have only spent about a month a year total fishing the river, the same areas continually produce winning bags of fish. Is it a waste of time to try and avoid these areas and try to make other small areas produce to avoid the pressure or are we better off trying to ” out fish” the competition?

Thoughts?

I don’t think its necessarily a waste of time, but those areas can get beat up rather hard. One thing to focus on is what other guys are throwing, and throw something completely different because the fish are used to seeing those baits. You could stroll through an area like this and not catch a fish, or you could go through the area and be jackin fish left and right.

One thing I like to try and do is fish certain areas that many others don’t. A lot of guys, including myself, like to and tend to fish the same areas repetitively because they have caught fish there in the past. Try focusing on spots or areas that don’t face a lot of pressure. You could come across a gold mine. It has helped me over the last few years to battle with pressure. I Hope this helpful!

Outkast,

Boods brings up some good points here…I think a lot of it is just confidence in your spots. Its hard to stray from fishing in your honey holes from where you’ve caught them in years past, and build the same confidence level on a different spot. I roll into new spots all the time and take about 3 casts and say the hell with this cuz I’ve never fished it before and I know i can go back to my original hole and catch fish…but really, u were only 20 yards away from finding a motherload, u just dont know. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that you just need to put the trolling motor down and go sometimes, forget about the big 225 pro xs or wutever you got, and cover water with a search bait til you find them. Sometimes you like to target just the spots that LOOK good also…they arent always gonna be there in those spots, they might be in a spot that just looks like there would be nothing there. You can never find to many spots either now days with bass fishing getting to be as big as it is

To me it’s all about the time spent on and off the water before the cast is made. I like to do a lot of homework using google maps and depth maps to piece together new areas. I am completely comfortable picking apart new water and not catching a fish for hours. It gets to you mentally but the first bite is extremely rewarding. I take into consideration the seasonal patterns that the fish will be in, and the type of cover I have been catching them in to help eliminate water. In late summer I like to find clean water weed lines near channels in open water. Doesn’t sound like something that would exist on the river but trust me, there are miles of this water if you know where to look. I try to find stumps and sand/gravel transitions and most of them hold fish..Just start hurling a carolina rig, swim jig and rattle trap to find the exact details you are looking for. I am totally a believer in patterns like the one I mentioned above, and NOT spots. AREAS as a whole can hold a different size range of fish than others, but usually the fish I am looking for are spread out around an area the size of a football field. I feel that if you have one stump or one point that you rely on for a tournament, you are a lot less likely to win…however if there is a stump on my weedline with a couple 4’s on it, you bet I’m going to fish it

I am a believer in checking up on some of your hot areas in there peak times, especially if ur tourny fishing weekly. It also helps to continually every day search for that spot that isnt facing much pressure, and has em in there, aka spring will hold lots of bass shallow so u know that is a peak time to check on ur shallow spots that are flooded and tear em up. It also helps as cade said to figure out what the fish are hitting and the structure and depth to eliminate the huge amount of water that can waste ur time and ur confidence, burn the water up and burn u lures.

Thanks for the reply guys but maybe I should have worded this differently. If you take the top five impoundments in the country that the elite series or FLW tour at some point will make a stop at and look at what wins these tournaments year in and year out you can eliminate half of the water. Our one day tournament format has sheltered the average fisherman from what being ” on fish ” really means. ANYONE can go out and stumble on to a school and whack em one day. YOu start adding 2 and 3 more days to that same tournament and your looking at a totally different leader board. Now, to get back to the ” area” deal. I understand that it is to our advantage to go out and explore water that does not get the pressure. What is the answer when that is not possible? You put 150 boats on any pool of the Mississippi for 1-3 days of practice and even a 1 day tournament and you have pressured fish. My experience has been that you need to place yourself around as many fish as possible in this situation and focus on presentation and lure selection. In the outside chance that I have an area that I believe I can win in but I am only fishing for 5 bites all day, how does a guy go there when the pressure is the same per the quantity of fish?

I would say it really depends upon the season. If you are talking spring, fish tend to group in the same areas year after year because of the spawn. I have personally taken it on the chin because I didn’t want to fish pressured fish in the spring. That’s not to say you couldn’t find a spot that no one else is fishing but the odds are difinitely against you. Even on the river those fish stack into particular areas because forage and spawning. If you are fishing later in the season when the fish spread out you will have a better chance of finding something off the beaten path.

Matt

I think “spot fishing” on the river is not as predictable as one might think. I’ve seen many good spots go completely dead over a period of a couple years due to pressure and/or silting.
To think “spots” on a river produce year after year is not the ticket. So many variables make a “spot” good. To get all those variables to fall in line year after year is not usually the case.