Video tip: How to position your boat correctly

There are a lot of little things that contribute to your ultimate fishing success and none is more important than properly positioning your boat in relation to the structure, cover or fish that you have marked with your chartplotter.

I drop waypoints on all my favourite spots, as well as when I mark a school of fish, but I have to confess that like many anglers, I still often like to use a marker buoy as well for a visual reference.  A funny thing about marker buoys, though, is that so many anglers view them as targets.  By that I mean that as soon as they drop one of the visual references into the water to pinpoint a school of fish, they cast as close to it as possible.  So close, in fact, they often get their lure tangled in the line.

What you have to remember, especially when you’re casting lures like crankbaits is that they don’t generally get down to their maximum diving depth until you’re at least half way into your retrieve.  So you always want to cast well beyond the marker to give your lure a chance to get down and be running at its maximum depth when you finally pull it past the fish.

Even if you’re casting a fast falling lure like a jig, however, you still want to cast well beyond the marker because if you drop it beside the buoy and then close the bail on your reel, your lure will pendulum toward you and fall several feet away from the location or fish that the marker buoy is highlighting.

It is the subject of this week’s Fish Talk With The Doc video that I recorded for the boys at the Fish ‘N Canada television show and you can watch it by clicking on link below.  Good fishing and good boat positioning.