THE BASS COLLEGE

Has anyone ever gone to the lake, not to fish, but to read the lake. Observe the wildlife and the habits of the fish? If so, it would be great to hear your observations. Sometimes when I go fishing, I take a few minutes to scan the lake or look back from previous observations to make a good guess of where to fish today. I don't just think in the now, it seems productive, merging the "old" with the "new".:)  This really isn't a tactic or tip thread, it's just a way to alter your current way of thinking.......

I tend to do this a lot on slow days when I'm not getting bites.  I try to think about what's different that day compared to other successful days.  It's easy to think about temperature and weather, but I try to account for wind direction, current direction, and changes in color of water in different spots.  Another thing I started to notice was realizing where fish were bunching up on hotter days due to the shade areas.  I'm not directly speaking on areas we can see above water, but adjusting what I can see underwater and thinking about the angle of sun penetration and where I'd stack up to launch a sneak attack on any passing food source.

Also, once this season starts up I'm definitely going to take my inflatable around some of the local shallower ponds and see what structure is build up around because mainly being a shore angler, I'm using my senses on locating spots rather than knowing exactly what my casting locations are like underneath.  These will be mostly observation days just like you speak of!

Always keep your eyes open looking for anything that may help. A pattern thats been succesful for us on new bodies of water that we need to catch bass on quickly is  to run the lake looking for groups of blue herons or other fish eating birds. I can't tell you how many times I've been flying down  a lake ,see some herons on a particular shore stop and cast and bam bass on. We've actually placed in the top ten of a tournament before strictly running this pattern. We were on a lake we'd never fished and we didn't  get a chance to prefish and we ran that pattern all day and caught15 pounds in a team event and placed 6th out of 70 boats and all we did was fish areas that had herons!!!!!!!!!!  I also always make it a habit to stop and fish an area with an extreme amount of wildlife activity. If I see a buch of deer in a creek I'll stop and make a few casts. I don't know if its a coincidence or not but I've been very successful doing this as well especially with big bass.I dont know if its a sun angle thing or a temperature thing or what but it seems to work. So yes I'm always observing