productive
clues to finding
ProdUCtiVe patterns
O
ne of the most important truths i ever heard about pattern fishing was voiced by aaron Martens—on one of those years he didn’t win the U.S. open. as often hap- pened while he’s been on tour, he spoke after one of those occasions where he had a narrow sliver of time to cross the country and still get a few hours to pre-fish. in this particular instance, upon his arrival he discovered that weather conditions had dropped lake Mead maybe 7- to 10-degrees on the surface and the bites were slow in coming. and because it was harder to generate strikes in the cooler water, he explained, it was much harder to figure out what areas were better than others, which was particu- larly troublesome on such a big body of water. i think many of us have faced the same reality, even though it might not have been caused by a drop in water temperature. My own mantra has been: “a bite is better than no bite.” That’s because you can begin to make some decisions if you get a peck on your worm, a blow-up on your topwater or a flash on your jerkbait—or heck, just catch a 10-incher. But if you go without
any reaction from the fish; if you gather no tangible evidence you’re even on the same planet with any bass, it’s extremely hard to make the next move. When you think about it, you don’t really need a lot of information or input. Still, how often do we get derailed because we didn’t catch fish or get a lot of bites right away? The fact is, for every trip where we hit a few familiar spots with a few familiar baits and we’re off and running, how many days are there where the patterns don’t fall into our laps? and if you take your “home” waters out of the equation, how many times does a strange lake suddenly seem very strange when you don’t get feedback to get yourself closer to a productive pattern? in those cases, it may come down to recognizing a few clues as to what or where things could be happening, or even the relative activity level of the fish you are trying to catch. Maybe something in the following paragraphs will help. Most are pretty simple—not unlike Martens recognizing how fewer bites are problematic—but sometimes something simple can kickstart the day and your own experience will fill in the blanks.
tami Morrow says, “listen up.” Something that simple can tell you what could be going on with the fish.
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