(Editor's note: "Catching Bass with Dustin Wilks" airs four times per week on Sportsman Channel – 6:30 a.m. ET Monday, 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, 5 a.m. Saturday and 4:30 p.m. Sunday. The six-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier provides BassFans with additional insight about each episode in these submissions.)
For all you tournament fishermen out there, how many times have you fished right through the winning area, only not to have identified it? If you are like me, that answer is a A LOT. More than a few times I’ve fished the same exact spot a tournament was won on in practice or used the same lure without recognizing it was the right thing. The little details are what it's all about.
Last week’s episode was all about recognizing the pattern, so if you happened to catch the show, it was filled with good info on letting the fish tell you what to do. The timeframe was November and we all know the fishing can be really weird that time of the year in the South, with lower weights than usual winning tournaments.
The first fish that bit was one that could have easily led me astray – it was an outlier. That fish bit on the very outside of a marina and I saw it break while I was running in. One fish can easily be a fluke, so I don’t start getting too excited until about the third or fourth bite doing the same thing. I fished the whole marina, getting another fish or two on the shallow parts.
From there I went straight to docks and I found the fish were shallow, I mean really shallow, like the parts most people would not even bother to cast to. Where most angers concentrate, the ends of the docks, there was nothing. So imagine if you had just gone down the dock bank and not tried all your options. You’d come up with nothing, then you learn that is where the winner was and you start scratching your head and doubting yourself.
An Eco Pro Spinnerbait, a Yo-Zuri 1.5 squarebill crankbait and a bladed jig with a Culprit Incredi-Slim trailer got all my fish. These baits fly by the fish's faces in shallow water and they either have to move or snap at it. A bass is a mean predator, so they snapped, thank goodness, before I did the same.
Many times a great pattern is found totally by mistake.
One of the coolest patterns I’ve seen was post-spawn and I was just barely 16 years old off on an adventure by myself. I was slinging a topwater down a steep bank. About 10 feet off the bank, I quickly reeled my bait back to the boat and halfway back, kaboom!, a nice 4-pounder. So on the next cast I threw my bait to the shore, popped it loudly a couple of times followed by a pause, then reeled as fast as I could back and what do you know – kaboom! Another nice 4-pounder. This pattern went on in several lakes for the next couple of weeks. I actually look for this pattern still to this day with occasional success. Works well in really clear water post-spawn.
The other thing to look for is if you are getting your bites while not paying attention and your bait is paused, then you are probably fishing too fast.
Long story short, listen to the fish to recognize the pattern.
