Fishing for bass on pressured water? Here are 5 keys to success

 

#4  KEEP THINGS QUIET

Pressured fish spook easily, so avoid smacking your bait on the water to clear weeds. And kill your electronics when you’re not using them—the sound carries down there. You can also reduce disturbance by lubricating baits with scent to help ease them through cover instead of ripping them. If you see trolling motor paths sliced through shallow weeds, meanwhile, avoid them.

#5  TRUST YOUR ELECTRONICS

This is where you build an edge nobody else can see. On my local lakes, weeds grow out to roughly eight feet before the light gives out. So, I colour my graphs out to that depth then run along the visual contour, scanning for weedlines with side imaging set to read out to 100 feet each way. (The Humminbird One Boat Network, Omnia Fishing and Navionics apps all let you view and colour the contours you want to fish.)

As I move along, I also drop waypoints on every weed point, indent and, especially, isolated clumps off the edge. Those are gold mines. This takes more time up front, but then you know exactly where to fish, as well as where to find the weedline on dark or windy days when you otherwise can’t read the water.

From there, set your trolling motor to track the waypoints you dropped, and it will follow the weedline for you. When you come to a gem of a spot, hit spot-lock and fish it before carrying on. And as you move from waypoint to waypoint, try circling cover, or pausing off to the side of a point and fishing it without driving over it. Do all that and you’ll be doing what 80 per cent of the other anglers are not—including catching more bass.