Find yourself on fish, and sooner or later you'll find you're not alone. That's the reality every tournament angler faces when fishing a hot area within sight of other competitors.
Crowded water is nothing new to Dion Hibdon. He grew up on and still lives near Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks, one of the most heavily trafficked bass lakes in the country. From that experience he learned about fishing in traffic. But now, in the big leagues, he knows that sharing an area with a half-dozen or more of the world's best bass anglers presents an altogether different challenge, especially on smaller waters.
"On a lot of the lakes we're fishing now, you can catch fish in only a very limited number of spots," he said. "In those types of tournaments, you just have to get used to having company."
Case in point: At the recent Old Hickory FLW, he found himself sharing the same 50-acre backwater creek area with an armada of other boats for the first 2 days. At one point on day 2, six of the other eventual Top 10 finishers were in the vicinity (Hibdon ended up finishing 2nd).
"I had to fish around some pretty good fishermen, but I just bounced around and found a few key pieces of wood in there that held the fish," he said. "Fortunately, I'd fished that creek quite a bit over the years, so I kind of knew where (the submerged logs) were."
Fish Against Fish, Not Fishermen
Whether you're familiar with a lake or not, Hibdon says the secret to dealing with a crowd lies between your ears.
"It's strictly a mind thing, and more than anything you have to keep your concentration and do your own thing. You can't look at another angler all the time, see him catch one on a different bait, and then go thinking you better change what you're doing. On the flip side, if another angler is looking at you, then he's not concentrating. Sure, you've got to outfish the other fishermen, but you're still fishing for fish."
Hibdon doesn't exactly ignore what's going on in other boats. He just uses what he sees to refine his approach to the area.
He said: "If I see everybody pounding the visible stuff, I might go fish the dumbest-looking piece of area I can find. Lots of guys miss out when they're focused on cover because fish only use it for a portion of the day. Lots of barren, no-nothing banks have fish cruising on them throughout the day. Like on Old Hickory, the obvious stuff was getting pounded, but some of those real ugly banks always seemed to have a fish or two on them."
Here's another tactic: When he's confronted with having to fish an area that's been hammered with power baits for days, Hibdon likes to throw them a change-up.
"Fish are really bad about suspending when they're irritated. Many times, when there's a ton of pressure on a spot, they'll just quit biting. Those fish are still in the vicinity, but they've either moved tighter to cover or out away from the bank. Then you have to swim something through them or over them.
"A real good bait for me for doing that has always been a skirted twin-tail grub, like the one I won the (1997) Classic on. Just sling it out there and swim it through them, fishing it slow but never letting it get to the bottom."
For the tight-to-cover fish, he likes pitching a "Senko-type bait" and twitching it about 3 feet under the surface. "You might have to make 25 pitches to the same log until you get the right angle for a bite," he noted.
'Keeping' A Spot
In this age of boats wrapped in brightly colored logos, an individual tour angler is pretty easy to recognize. "I'm in the (Ranger) NASCAR boat, so it's pretty hard to go unnoticed," Hibdon said.
But even a guy in a factory rig will draw some company if he's sitting on a hole and making repeated trips to the livewell. Difficult as it may be to leave biting fish, Hibdon tries to keep moving, especially during the first 2 days of tournament.
"I don't like to let anyone see me fishing anywhere for any amount of time. If you sit on a spot for 15 minutes, everyone will notice. If I've got 10 spots, I'll try to catch one fish at each of them rather than 10 fish out of one hole."
But at crunch time it's a different story. "If I haven't gotten any on those nine other spots, I'll go sit on the one that had fish, especially if it's a day 2 and I need to make a cut," he said.
What happens when one or more boats are vying for the same stretch of water, and some launched in an earlier flight? It depends on who found what, when they found it, what they're doing and when they started doing it.
"You just try to do the best you can and play it by ear," he said. "There's no written rule, but there are some ethics at work. Very few guys use the bent pole pattern (picking up on another angler's precise method and location) out here, and 99 percent of the time if you treat the other guy with respect, there won't be any conflicts.
"There are some hotheads out there, but you can work it out with most guys. Just talk it out, either on the water or at the weigh-in."
