PAYS OFF
forward-f ® acing education
Winter 2024
I
n just his second season of fishing a full slate of
nine Bassmaster Opens, New York pro Kyle Patrick
took a quantum leap forward – culminating with a dominating win at Lake of the Ozarks. While he admits that
Garmin’s Livescope technology propelled him forward, it was
what he did with those electronics that propelled him to a
spot in the 2023 Bassmaster Classic. He doesn’t need a full
two hands to count the number of non-Livescope fish he
weighed in all year, but that doesn’t mean it was a matter of
plug-and-play.
“Forward-facing sonar is really difficult,” he said. “It’s
easy to get frustrated and it’s not a magic pill. It just takes
time. This was the first year that I felt I’d moved up the
learning curve beyond just seeing a bait or seeing fish. I
could discern little sections with harder bottom, or whether
a fish was turned in a certain direction. That stuff matters
a ton. It tells you where to cast, and those sorts of details
make it 10 times more efficient.”
He also recognized that like many aspects of a fishing
education, electronics are highly personalized. Settings
matter immensely, but within the parameters of how your
eyes see things and how your brain processes information.
By Pete Robbins
“There’s no one right palette,” he explained. “I personally like moss, but a lot of people like blue. Even once you choose one, you need to always be making slight adjustments depending on the water clarity or what the bottom is made out of. Lake of the Ozarks is a whole lot different than Florida – a lot more rock, less mud.”
IT’S HOW YOU WIGGLE YOUR WORM
The biggest changes, Patrick has realized, relate to how an angler must work his or her lure. Part of that is the newfound understanding of certain aspects of bass behavior and part of it is choosing lures that “ping” properly on the display.
Historically, glide baits, jerkbaits, Alabama Rigs and a selection of Damiki Rig-style soft plastics dominated the genre because they showed up so well, but Patrick has used offerings outside of those boundaries for much of his success. Indeed, while a drop-shot played a role in his win, it was a more traditional jig and chunk that produced most of his weigh fish.
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