®
Winter 2023
Finding bass is critical to success and often distinguishes experienced anglers from beginners. There is the slow way to find bass by trial and error, and there is the quick way by lowering a camera. Even when you lower a camera, and no bass are to be found you learn valuable information.
Are bass not biting because you are using the wrong lure, or you are fishing in the wrong place? Lower an underwater camera and find out.
I now live in Washington State near some of the best smallmouth (and largemouth) bass fishing around.
Since I am supposed to be retired (I kind of flunked retirement for the third time) I made it my mission to learn how to fish my local lake. The problem was that despite a considerable smallmouth bass population it is one of the toughest lakes for angler success.
The bass here simply don’t follow the usual script, so most anglers drive right by as they head to Lake Washington or Lake Sammamish.
ON THE HUMPS
With my Lowrance HDS LIVE units, I was able to locate one of the few underwater humps in this natural lake. Despite being perfect structure, I couldn’t catch a bass off it trip after trip. I finally lowered my underwater camera system and verified there were no bass to be found.
Being stubborn I continued to check this hump month after month with the underwater camera, and one day I suddenly found a school of big smallmouth bass using it.
Ranger Bottom
Dock AL
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