SOFT STRUCTURE
creek arm doing pretty good on spots relating to bait
balls. Out in the middle when your fish are on bait your GPS does not help much because your food chain is always on the move. I started to really notice how the springs tend to nearly always follow the center of the creek, I mean right in the gut of the creek, especially if you’re in a year-round, running-water creek arm. Well I notice one afternoon that some of the springs were quite large so I pitched my spoon about 10 ft into the center of the spring and a good spot grabbed it about 5ft down in the middle of it. So I started looking for the bigger springs and pitching spoons to them and ended up with a big sack of spots. After that I really started targeting springs a lot more all over the lake. Not long ago I was in a team tournament, fishing again in the middle of a river throwing swim baits, and I got hammered on swim bait in the middle of a large spring. It was a 15 lb squawfish. That was not good in a tournament. However it led us to win the tournament drop shotting and spooning the middle of the river in about 30 feet of water this time some on the bottom others halfway down. The point is they were all using the springs for cover just as if it were a tree or a bridge piling only better because they could attack the target right through the middle of the cover. It’s probably hard for a baitfish to detect trouble ahead in a structure that is always moving with bubbles. It also works for so many other species of fish. One summer in August I was spooning in around 60 feet deep or so vertically on the springs and caught several salmon 3 to 7 lbs. Of course when I found them I lost the bass. But I just moved down the creek channel and got back on some bass. This pattern is so key because most of the time when you are trying to target off shore fish and you lose the source of food they were feeding on or lack of food, then just focus on the springs as if you were in a stand of trees pitching dart heads to spoons to spinner baits or swimbaits. When they’re in the springs they’re feeding.
WIND
Wind is nearly always
your friend. I used to hate it because, back in the late eighties and early
10
nineties, I was not nearly as diverse as I am now. I was into finesse fishing more than reaction baits. Sure I used everything from time to time but my strength was finesse baits of some kind. Eventually I really got into reaction baits a lot. Back then I was big on rattle traps, spinner baits and spoons. Once I got on a windy bank pattern and learned how to fish the wind and the currents it produces, the rest was history. I got so into it I went straight to the rivers of a lake just to find the current. The main importance about wind is the current it produces. It sends everything you are after into a small location.
TIDE
Well, tides are such a big key I don’t have enough time to talk all about it here in this article, but it is based on current, the same as what the wind produces. If all you ever think about is where to position your cast in the current you’re thinking right. No mater where you are, if you have a tide there is a good bite. Yes, some days are better than others, but you’re usually in the right spot. The funny thing is a lot of people don’t realize that the better fish are in the strongest part of the current. Most of the fish will be in the eddy but the big dog will try to find some kind of break out front and lay in the best spot you don’t always see and it’s harder to fish that heavy current.
They have a great vantage point and can use that current in their favor to attack. For example, in the Pit River on Lake Shasta, if you see a large boulder outcropping and a big current break, you will always see behind it a large eddy. Great spot for sure, however not the key spot. If you take a spoon and pitch in front
of the boulder right where
the current hits the rock
head on, you will see the
spoon sort of just sink
vertical for a split second
before the current takes
your line downstream. The
strong current creates an
underwater wave like you
see a surfer ride in the
ocean. But in the middle
of that wave is slack
water for a big bass to lay
in waiting in a front row
position for his choice in