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Applying a structure to fishing

How many of you apply a theory, or a method when they are on the lake. Last year I asked the question "where do you spend your time?". I got a lot of answers along the lines of, "If you want to be good on lake soso, fish lake soso a lot!". I am not arguing that if I spend 30 days on soso I will improve there. The hitch in this is that I am limiting my learning to that body of water. This is not going to help at Grande Lake, or the delta. I find myself showing up and running to the spots that have produced before, and not understanding why they are there. I understand that, "They are where you find them" and our fish a different then southern strain. I would like to know how many show up and use a strategy to find fish? The times that I have applied the percentage triangle help me some. Is there some checklist that you use that gives you a basis to concentrate on a type of cover and depth? I'm sure that the seasons play a huge role in this. Looking forward to hearing your opinions on this.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Bess on December 30, 2015 at 3:16pm

I was trying to hijack the thread, and we succeeded! Oh how I miss the good ol' days...

Josh Potter said:

I wasn't trying to hijack John's original post. It's a good topic and there were a couple of well thought out responses. But my little buddy Mike threw one over the heart of the plate. We will now resume our previously scheduled fishing discussion.

Permalink Reply by Josh Potter on December 30, 2015 at 7:45pm

Two things that happened here everyday in the old days:

1- Someone got offended
2- Someone visited the site

Neither happen on a daily basis anymore

Permalink Reply by P.J. Koshi on December 31, 2015 at 10:08am

The wealth of knowledge and ideas that got tossed around as well as the jokes and friendly insults was definitely why people tuned in here in years past. I'm glad whoever looked these last couple days had the chance to see a tiny bit of that.

Permalink Reply by Ronald Hobbs, Jr. on January 1, 2016 at 5:17am

I remeber your last thread "were guy spend their time" remeber I was the one disagreeing that fishing 1 lake makes you a good fisherman on that lake. Jake and PJ hit the nail on the head. Applying theory and method is what I do every time I am out. I don't have a checklist, I don't look it up in the Bass Fishermans Dictionary, I apply my sound logic and reason to where how and when I fish. I would consider this theory, and method, when I catch fish somewhere, I ask why, to myself, and it comes down to what Snake says, food shelter, sweet bass love..... If you can combine food and shelter intersecting a path between spawn to.summer and summer to fall and fall to winter then winter to spawn areas you have a winner.
Bass fishermen are weird, they over concentrate on the stuff that probably matters the least. Find them 1st then work on techniques lures etc. To catch them. Some days a good polarized glasses and a fast trolling motor is all you need to see cruising fish, or other variations in shallow clear water that will likely hold fish, other days you need a good graph to see down 45 to 50 feet to see crumble clay break lines and bait fish schools and suspended bass. So buy the best you can, both sunglasses and graph, they are your eyes without them you are blind.
So now it comes down to how I approach a day of fishing. 1st of all I determine my goal I want to accomplish for the day, a few examples of different goals..... catch alot, catch quality, catch a giant, gain confidence in lure or technique, catch the biggest 5 fish limit I can, find new areas. Once goals for the day have been decided upon (in my head) I go fish, and apply the best theories and methods, to conquer my goals. These theories and methods are not written down but a big scramble of information obtained by my past experiences whipped together with theories and methods I have learned about via books / friends etc. My experiences always come before others they are like the eggs to the scramble, where shared info. By good buddies are the complimentary ingredients, read stuff even lesser so ingredient, and so on.

Permalink Reply by Ben Hanes on January 7, 2016 at 5:32pm