Bob Jensen: Give the fish what they want - SC Times
I was going to go fishing today, but the weather is blustery and the forecast is for it to remain blustery. A few years ago, blustery weather wouldn't have stopped me; but today, I am going to stay home.
The current weather conditions remind me of a similar day a few years ago when the weather wasn't so nice, but we went fishing anyway. We caught a good number of fish, but we caught them in a way that we didn't expect. That reminded me of other days when we caught fish using a technique that we hadn't expected to use.
It was a chilly, windy day in late October. A couple of friends and I were going to be on a walleye lake that had produced for us in the past in late autumn. We expected the walleyes to be on humps in 20 to 25 feet of water. Some sonar work revealed that they were.
We expected the walleyes would be willing to eat jigs tipped with minnows. They had always done so in the past at that time of year. On this day, they weren't interested in eating our jigs and minnows. We tried jigs of various colors, minnows of various sizes and species, but we couldn't get the walleyes to eat our offerings.
For some reason, we had brought along a dozen nightcrawlers. Walleye anglers know that crawlers are mostly a summer bait. We were way past summer, but nonetheless, we had some crawlers. One of the members of our group threaded a crawler onto his jig as we were making our last pass through the school of walleyes that we had located.
At this point, we were considering that maybe they weren't even walleyes. We could not understand how a walleye in October could pass up our well-presented jig/minnows. We quickly learned that they were walleyes, they could refuse our jig/minnows and they were very willing to eat crawlers. We caught a walleye on every crawler we had. When we ran out of crawlers, the fish quit biting. Give the fish what they want.
Another interesting situation arose when we were chasing largemouth bass on a lake that had a marginal bass population. Ordinarily we like to get after the fish that are most abundant on a lake, but this was back in the day when we enjoyed experimenting and going against the grain. Usually the grain beat us, but on this day we did better than expected.
In the fall, big baits are usually the way to go, especially if you're after big fish. When largemouth bass are the target, a rubber-legged jig with a bulky plastic with appendages, something like a Rage Craw or Rodent, will get the bigger bass to bite. So that's the route that we went.
The water was exceptionally clear on this lake, so we were making long casts to suspected bass-holding areas. Our baits looked good, and they were working through areas where there should have been some fish, but they went ignored. Nothing wanted them.
Mostly out of frustration, we switched to Ocho Worms, a much more subtle bait and nowhere near as bulky. The bass ate them willingly. That pattern has not repeated itself once for me since then, but on that day, going against the grain paid off.
In the fall, as in any other time of the year, it pays to remind yourself that when the fish aren't eating what you're showing them, show them something else.
Comments
Post a Comment