It’s important to make precise casts. Here’s how to position yourself for fishing success

The late Aaron Martens was the most novel, fresh, unconventional and unorthodox angler I’ve ever had the pleasure of fishing with and calling a friend. His untimely passing in 2021 still hurts badly. But I think of the fishing savant often when I am out on the water, and I find myself smiling when I do something I know he’d enjoy. I can even hear him chuckle and say in his distinctive Southern California Valley Boy manner, “Dude, I dig that.”

Like when Liam and I started the open-water season catching some mammoth northern pike, and more recently when we strung together back-to-back 100-plus walleye days—including a stout 30-incher—using a trick Aaron delighted in using.

Watch almost any other boat out on the water as they work their way around an underwater point or down a shoreline and you’ll see them casting their lures up shallow and retrieving them back to the boat. You will almost never see them spot-lock up shallow—in knee deep water—and cast out, retrieving in the opposite direction. Just as rarely will you see two anglers stand side-by-side on the front casting platform and work their way down a shoreline pitching and casting their baits parallel to the bank. But it is often the best strategy you can employ.

When we were pike fishing, for example, just after the ice had retreated, we found the big gators stacked up and hiding along the shadow lines projected out onto the water from steep sloping shorelines. The walleyes, on the other hand, were bunched up big time in about 17 feet of water. By casting parallel to shore we were able to keep our lures in the high percentage strike zone for almost the entire cast, highlighting the importance of precise depth control. 

Understand what I am saying? If we had positioned the boat out in deeper water and casted in toward shore as most anglers do, our lures would have only been in the strike zone for only about 10-percent of the cast.  The rest of the retrieve we’d have been wasting our time with our baits wandering around in no man’s land.

Click on the following short video and you’ll see what I mean.