Last year a friend was visiting about this time of year and we were talking about fishing. I was telling him how this time of year is usually tough and that I wasn’t missing anything by staying home. About that time he got a phone call from a friend who was driving home from a tournament he just won with a record amount of fish weighed in for this area, averaging over 4 pounds. So now this year I wonder where they caught them.
I have caught fish in April, usually it was in current but I have also caught fish in back water lakes if the water got warm enough. I also remember all the tournaments I won or placed high, the fish were seldom in one small area, but rather one big area and I had to go from one spot to the next catching fish here and there.
Bass fishing from a boat is tough on a big river with dozens of large areas to cover, not to mention the adjoining pools with dozens more spots to check. So you can’t just relax and fish a backwater lake all day, no you have to hit as many spots as you can, cover as much water as you can, find as many fish or “hits” as you can and run run run all over the place. Its easy to fish an area and conclude it is dead, and miss the best fishing by not being keyed.
I’m usually pretty good at finding some fish, I cover everything and probably work harder than most. I have run into buddies fishing one area, then see them again an hour later fishing another spot way back in the backwaters 20 miles away. That is how it goes, cover a lot of water and hit the best areas in each spot to see if there is any action. Most fisherman aren’t that good at finding fish so they resort to following those who have won tournaments, or ask where the fish are at the bait shops, or just ride around and looking for and watching other boats. Some wait until tournament morning, then follow the guys with reputations to their spots.
