I once did an interview with Aaron Martens, Elite Series professional bass angler. In that interview, we talked mostly about how he, as a “natural angler” prefished a new body of water. One, of the many things he mentioned stuck with me, and I wonder about it constantly when on the water prefishing myself. He said, “An avid big game hunter, makes for a good bass fisherman.”
He elaborated some, saying, that bass are similar to deer or other big game, in that they have trails they use to move back and forth between feeding grounds and resting grounds. An angler that can keep that in mind can understand that there are three places to catch bass. Where they eat, where they live, and along the trail they use to move between them. According to Aaron, the best place is a bend in the trail they travel. Not so much as it may or may not be a gathering place, but it gives the angler a target to concentrate on, and cross paths with all the bass using that area.
As I try to zero in on off shore bass fishing, I am continually thinking, and this has become part of my process. The bend in the road. What did he mean by that? I have come to believe that a bend in the road allows the angler to target all the bass that might be using that road. Whether bass are traveling to feeding grounds or going to resting areas, the bass using it, will go past that bend. So instead of working up and down the road and possibly casting at a lull in traffic, if an angler stays put and keeps casting at the same bend, eventually traffic will catch up and you can load the boat.
I try to think of it like this. You’re sitting on a side road of a very busy street and you want to turn left onto this busy street. Seemingly there is not a prayer that this will happen. Traffic after traffic. Once one direction clears the other will be full, and you’re still stuck. But eventually, traffic clears and there is not a car in sight, and you can easily make your left hand turn.
What if you found that perfect travel route with a great feeding area on one end and a perfect ledge to suspend at and rest on the other. You work up and down the ledge and just can’t get a bite. Could you be in that lull of traffic that you waited on while sitting on that side street? If you pick an area that is recognizable to you, you can repeatedly cast your bait to the same spot and wait for the traffic to catch up to you.
Just something I wonder about.
Get the Net it’s a Hawg
Mike Cork
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