Just recently back from the south fishing for bass. I fished Oconee( spelling?) in SC( sister Lake to BASSMasters event lake Bartwell(spelling?), and TOHO/KISSEMEE,( spelling?) area in Florida. I learned a few things which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise.
First In AAA tourneys the locals seem to be stuck on one or two techiques with 80% of the fields using one or two techniques and very often identical baits. No they aren’t stupid …there is a reason they use them. But we bring varied techniques or presentations we have use up here and fish structure we would fish up here and have a distinct advantage over the same old same old. I didn’t fish many tourneys but helped about 15 locals prefish and catch more fish using new techniques in their upcoming tourneys.
Also as many of you already know, many of those lakes down there are very very very heavy pressure lakes. So using a new presentation in new locations is very productive. I was amazed to see almost no one fishing rock shores and rip rap, and almost no one fising shallow weedless or sparcely weeded feeding flats areas in low light with anything..let alone very productive clattershads and rattletrappie baits.
Also with regards to deep Spots and Largemouth (25-90 feet) I was very pleased to see how our Walleye/Bass/Striper/Salmon jigging spoons and jigging blade baits produced. It was a no brainer to me when I was shown and told in research that many of the fisherman would be using, and did use in front of me, 1/4 to 5/16 either drop shot rigs or jig heads even in the 90 feet. After hour after hour of discussing this technique a large percentage of the Bass locals fished with this way admitted they never felt a bite, and that fish “sometimes were there when they lifted the rig”… can you say crap shoot. On the jigging spoons the fish really slap it, and you have no doubt at all that you were bit.
On the other side of the coin I can see where some of the many techniques I got the opportunity to veiw and or try will definitely improve my Bass game up here. The active bass deep structure techniques I saw down there in paticular will give and have given me a whole new perspective on the deaper bass I almost never target. I hear all the time up here about guys and teams fishing 20-35 foot deep structure for monster bass, but until now it was kind of a mistery to me. With some practice it could get to be a great way to catch low pressured fish that almost no one else is targeting.
What have some of the rest of you seen in other areas of the country that surprised you???