(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
If you fish tournaments, especially multiple-day events, then there’s nothing better than finding a seemingly endless school of fish. While it’s possible to win by picking off single fish here and there, finding a massive school, or multiple schools, enhances your chances of doing well. That’s why Arizona pro Josh Bertrand encourages anglers to put their efforts into “going for the gold mine and staying on the gold mine when you find it.”
He said that it’s nearly an addiction, but it’s one that’s justified, because it can take you from “zero to hero really, really quick.”
When the bass are in spawning mode – or just before or after the spawn – he’s less likely to look for the big groups. But in winter, summer and fall, it’s what he goes after.
In winter, especially in clear water, he may look in the 30- to 60-foot depth range. The fish in that range in that time period are usually ganged up on baitfish, often shad. In the early summer and then again in the fall, he’ll often focus on the mid-depth range, typically 10 to 25 feet. That’s the key window on the Tennessee River lakes, perhaps the best schooling laboratories in bass fishing.
He’s a serious sonar freak, and over the past year has made prolific use of the Garmin PanOptix technology. He has it on his trolling motor so he can pan around and see out 100 feet from his boat. Between that tool and focused idling, he’ll often scan for hours before he makes his first cast.
Of course, low-tech solutions come into play as well, specifically an angler’s eyes. For shallow schools, he said that there’s no greater giveaway to their location than diving birds, especially seagulls. If they’re not present, sometimes shad will dimple the surface and occasionally disappear into the gaping mouth of a hungry bass, although he encourages novices to learn the difference between the “slurp” of a bass and the “smack” of a carp.
While PanOptix allows him to see in front of the boat, he’s also careful to dial in his two-dimensional sonar for looking at what’s below the boat. With the incredible resolution of modern sonar units, it’s possible to tell how big the fish are – perhaps not exactly what they weigh, but Bertrand claims that it’s easy to distinguish a fish under 3 pounds from one that pushes the scale past that mark.
He can also distinguish bass from other species like crappie, white bass and perch. The former look like “solid Sharpie dots,” usually a group of them hugging the bottom tightly, while the latter look more like a “shotgun blast.”
Once you have them pinned down, the key is extracting that first bite. The fish are grouped up in order to feed, so when one goes the others follow. Often he’ll start off by burning a crankbait, but if that doesn’t, work sometimes shaking a dropshot in place will do the trick. Once the school is ignited, the key is to keep them fired up. Before reeling in the fish he’ll punch in a waypoint on his GPS or throw out a buoy so that he can keep his exact lineup pegged.
Sometimes, he added, a painful bout of waiting can be the best medicine for schools that are busting the surface. When you see one come up and gobble a baitfish, cast right there, not past the fish, because you don’t know which way the bass is heading. If that fails to elicit a strike because your timing is off, sit and wait with your lure out of the water, prepared to fire a bullet cast as soon as you see a sign of feeding. He’s waited for up to 10 minutes, but more often than not the result is a fish in the livewell.
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