Leave Fish to Find Fish??

Saturday I had that situation where I had to decide to leave fish to find fish. I was fishing a small pond that is know for HUGE Gils. I got on the pond just as a snow storm started so I was quickly drilling holes and looking for fish so I could set up my flip over and get out of the snow. I marked some fish in an area where I caught fish before that was the deep hole and away from the trees in the other part of the pond. First drop down I catch a nice fish, but then all I could get was fish to follow my lure up and turn around and head down. I kept switching lures/colors etc thinking I could get them to bite, but after an hour I knew I had to do something. Again, fish under me the whole time, but just not getting them to bite. I quickly flip the top off and grab the Marcum to go search. Snow is coming down hard and wind is blowing as I check out some other holes. I finally get to an area at the edge of the trees where I mark fish again. I pull the tub over and set up on this new hole. It was the right move. I proceeded to catch about 25 gils out of that new hole. These are fish that are chasing the jigs up like the other hole, BUT this fish were smacking it. I have to admit, I have a hard time leaving fish under me to go search, but in this case, it paid off.

I did it about 8 times on 4 different lakes sat. Its the right thing to do if catching takes precedence. My wife and I ate a smaller meal of fish Sat night BUT we ate fish. Had I not moved around there would not have been enough.

I did it last night. First fish in the first hole was a giant 10.5″ gill, for the next 45 minutes they were biting very well but all tiny. I jumped around to 8-10 other holes in various depths but was not fortunate enough to find anything but little ones. Especially with gills I won’t sit on a hole that isn’t producing decend size or numbers for very long.

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Oh man, that’s a nice Gill!

Great to be over fish, better to be over biters (esp. bigguns like that)

Good call. I see it all the time that people sit over inactive fish and beat themselves up trying. I’m in to catching, so I keep moving