Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (4/5)

Lets say we have caught several bass in the thirty foot range, and we see more down there on our sonar but they just refuse to bite. They are probably responding to heavy boat traffic and fishing pressure. Here in Southern California we have only a few small ( two to four thousand acres ) lakes for many thousands of pleasure boaters, jet skiers, and of course fishermen.

As far as fishermen go, bass soon learn to associate trolling motor noise with danger. Sometimes I just tie my boat to a tree in a brushy cove and watch bass go about their business without trying to catch them, you can learn a lot from observation of your quarry, sometimes much more than catching them.

One major thing I learned from bass watching is that when a bass boat comes around the corner with its trolling motor running the bass just drop back into the heaviest cover and stay there until the bass boat is gone. After the bass boat leaves the bass start appearing again and do what they were doing before the trolling motor alerted them to danger. Here in So. Cal. the bass are educated and fairly hard to fool, the most successful anglers are mostly tournament fishermen with bass boats with all the latest electronics and most know how to use them, they belong to that group that compromises ten percent of the fishermen that catch ninety percent of the fish, and being tournament fishermen they usually release most if not all bass they catch.

While this is very commendable, you soon get a lake with most of the bass having been caught several times. This makes for some very smart and hard to catch bass, especially under adverse conditions. Lots of fishermen, jet skis, pleasure boaters, little or no clouds, clear water, weekend crowds, etc., etc.

I use my two anchors to take away the trolling motor sounds and still be able to put my bait precisely in the spot I want and hold it there for as long as I want, How, you ask?? I first drop the rear anchor in thirty feet of water, let out some scope and tie a bumper ( boat side protector ) to the rope, then using the trolling motor carry the front anchor as far forward as the length of anchor rope will allow, and drop the front anchor. Now we have the boat anchored front and rear in thirty feet of water with about two hundred feet of line between the anchors.

Now by letting out about twenty feet of line on the front anchor and pulling in the same amount on the rear line we can quietly sneak down the bank, no trolling motor noise and the boat stays steady so we can fish straight up and down in the same spot as long as we want. Impossible on a windy day using the trolling motor with one foot while trying to balance yourself with the other. Pretty sneaky eh!!??