Predicting Patterns – My Lake Clark Tournament Experience…a Swimming Success!
Earlier in the week, I predicted that I would likely be changing my fishing pattern from the one that I had found pre-fishing on the previous Saturday while preparing for the upcoming club bass tournament on Lake Clark the following weekend. Here is what I said: “The slight chance of rain and full moon on Saturday may change my fishing strategy just a bit. I expect the bite to be great, but the bigger fish may be harder to find.” It turned out that the pattern changed exactly as I predicted it would, so let me explain how and why I made the prediction.
While pre-fishing the weekend before, I covered a lot of water quickly with several lures and found a lot of small bass in the 12” to 15” range. Bass bigger than this range came out of the thickest isolated patches of coontail, an aquatic plant that grows in thick dense patches. This is a very small reservoir that is full of aquatic vegetation, and the maximum depth of the lake is not much more than 15 feet. The barometer was stable but on the high side that day, and it was very hot with virtually no clouds to be found.
These conditions would push those bigger fish even thicker into the coontail, so to get to them I would use a very heavy weight pegged so that it would not slide up and down the line, heavy braided fishing line, and a smaller “creature” bait like a baby brush hog or even a Texas rigged 6 inch worm. I would also use a “scent” on the bait providing two important elements: the scent would encourage the fish to hold on to the bait longer when they bit, and the scent would also make the bait more slippery helping it ease down into the thick grass better.
That same day in the early part of the morning, the wind was light, and we were catching bass on topwater frogs casting to the banks and working the baits over the tops of the coontail. Bass were busting the frogs near openings in the grass. The trick with frog fishing is not setting the hook right away when the bass hits it. You have to wait, until you feel the weight of the fish which can sometimes be up to two seconds. That is an eternity when a fish explodes on your lure making your heart jump out of your chest!
As that morning went on, and the sun started to get higher and hotter in the sky, the wind picked up, and the bass really started biting well on the outer edges of the grass line and especially on windblown points. The lee side of one particular windblown point offered three critical pieces of structure: isolated patches of grass, a rock pile, and a drop off. The bass were using the isolated cover as ambush points waiting for baitfish to come by with the wind generated current. The higher the sun, the tighter they were to cover, and the easier they were to find and catch.
At 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday, I was up doing some work and checked the weather for the upcoming weekend. First of all, I realized it was going to be a full moon. That would have been great if we were fishing a night tournament, but that meant that the bigger fish would be scattered out across the top of the coontail feeding during the night. Second, there was a chance of rain. We need rain desperately, and I would love nothing more than for us to get some good soaking showers. The barometer would be falling that morning, and there would be cloud cover making the fish bite very well. Those two elements would also cause those bigger fish that were deep in the grass to scatter a bit more. I can’t stress enough how thick the coontail is in this lake, so covering a lot of water and getting down where the bigger fish would be are mutually exclusive activities.
So, my original plan of starting off early in the morning fishing a topwater frog and covering a lot of water would be the same. What would change is what I would do when the sun got higher in the sky. To cover more water in that type of lake, I used a split shot rig with 1/0 hook, a Grande Bass baby rattlesnake in watermelon red, and since the water color was more heavily stained than when I pre-fished I colored the tip of the lure with a chartreuse yellow dye, and I crimped on a lightweight small split shot weight about 12 inches up the line. What this lightweight rig did was glide over the top outer edge of the grassline without getting snagged on the coontail, and it would fall slowly off the edge into the four to six foot water where the fish were holding. We were able to cover a lot of water quickly and targeted isolated patches of coontail. If you follow my Facebook posts, you noted that I had a limit of bass in the boat at 6:52am!
We launched the boat at 4:30am the morning of the tournament and headed to a spot on the far side of the lake where there was easy access to deep water, lots of coontail grass with a distinct breakline, and a bank that had been getting a lot of wind and waves blown into it the days prior to the tournament. Windblown banks are great, because waves oxygenate the water, and baitfish will be more plentiful there bringing with them big bass. Start fishing time was 5am. Not long after we started throwing the topwater frogs along the windblown bank, I had a BIG bass blow up on my bait. It sounded like someone threw a cinder block into the lake. I had the fish on for just a second, and it was a big one. But, he came unbuttoned pretty quickly. When fishing this technique, you’re going to miss fish. It just comes with the territory. I really hated to miss this one, though.
After moving to the windblown point I mentioned earlier that I found while pre-fishing, we started catching fish left and right. They were all “short fish,” and as I predicted those would be plentiful. It was so much fun! But, in a tournament you’re really fishing for just five good bites during the eight to nine hours you’re fishing. We were playing the percentage game hoping to add a couple of nice ones in the process of seeking smaller keeper size fish.
It was about 9:45am that our pattern started to improve. The sun was up high and hot, the clouds were scattered, and the wind picked up. In this case, we wanted the wind for a couple of reasons. First, it broke up the surface. This is a relatively clear water lake, and with the fishing pressure these fish were receiving we didn’t want to give them too much notice that a boat was in their neighborhood, and we didn’t want the fish to get too good of a look at our baits. We were looking for reaction strikes. Some anglers will think this is an odd way to think given the technique I was using, but let me tell you…I wasn’t soaking this bait too long in one spot. We were moving! Sometimes we were moving quickly back and forth in a space less than 75 to 100 yards long, but we were moving baits rather quickly to get them into those high percentage spots. Second, as I mentioned, windblown banks are good places to be. It created current, increased the oxygen levels in the water, it brings in baitfish (we saw LOTS of baitfish holding there), and of course the bass will move in, too.
I was wearing out those smaller fish, so when I saw my line start to swim off, rather than the hard tap of a bite I had been getting, I set the hook as usual. The big fish I set the hook on wasn’t having any and quickly surged to deeper water doing it so quickly that the rod I was lightly holding in my hand went flying out into the lake. In a flash, I saw the rod begin to disappear and begin to swim off, so I immediately dove in after it. I went under the surface and grabbed the rod down about two feet under water. I went to the surface quickly trying to get the rod out of the water and over my head to keep tension on the fish. He was still on there, and he was BIG!
While treading water, I quickly pushed my sunglasses back on my face and grabbed for my new Kistler hat that was floating nearby with my free hand. I could still feel the fish, and I started swimming back to the boat with the rod held high in the air. My co-angler was already reaching down to grab for me. The fish was suddenly gone. I grabbed the side of the boat, took up the slack on my line, and felt my heart break knowing that big fish had gotten away. It was then that I remembered I had not taken my wallet, keys, and cell phone out of my pocket and stowed them safely elsewhere in the boat as I normally did. Oops!
I got back in the boat, emptied my pockets, and started laughing with my buddy. A couple of other friends were fishing not too far from us down the bank. What a spectacle! Fishing is certainly an adventure, and we went on to continue catching fish. I only upgraded two of my five limit fish, but it was good enough for a third place finish, and our combined weights gave us second place team.
Taking a dip on a day that reached 103 degrees wasn’t too bad, either. And, leaving my cell phone on the hot boat deck with the battery out of it for the rest of the day dried it out well enough that I can make a call on it. The screen is ruined, it turns on and off by itself, but hey…it was still a perfect day. You may be able to predict how the fish will bite with some degree of confidence by reading and studying, but you can’t predict everything!
While pre-fishing the weekend before, I covered a lot of water quickly with several lures and found a lot of small bass in the 12” to 15” range. Bass bigger than this range came out of the thickest isolated patches of coontail, an aquatic plant that grows in thick dense patches. This is a very small reservoir that is full of aquatic vegetation, and the maximum depth of the lake is not much more than 15 feet. The barometer was stable but on the high side that day, and it was very hot with virtually no clouds to be found.
These conditions would push those bigger fish even thicker into the coontail, so to get to them I would use a very heavy weight pegged so that it would not slide up and down the line, heavy braided fishing line, and a smaller “creature” bait like a baby brush hog or even a Texas rigged 6 inch worm. I would also use a “scent” on the bait providing two important elements: the scent would encourage the fish to hold on to the bait longer when they bit, and the scent would also make the bait more slippery helping it ease down into the thick grass better.
That same day in the early part of the morning, the wind was light, and we were catching bass on topwater frogs casting to the banks and working the baits over the tops of the coontail. Bass were busting the frogs near openings in the grass. The trick with frog fishing is not setting the hook right away when the bass hits it. You have to wait, until you feel the weight of the fish which can sometimes be up to two seconds. That is an eternity when a fish explodes on your lure making your heart jump out of your chest!
As that morning went on, and the sun started to get higher and hotter in the sky, the wind picked up, and the bass really started biting well on the outer edges of the grass line and especially on windblown points. The lee side of one particular windblown point offered three critical pieces of structure: isolated patches of grass, a rock pile, and a drop off. The bass were using the isolated cover as ambush points waiting for baitfish to come by with the wind generated current. The higher the sun, the tighter they were to cover, and the easier they were to find and catch.
At 2:00 in the morning on Wednesday, I was up doing some work and checked the weather for the upcoming weekend. First of all, I realized it was going to be a full moon. That would have been great if we were fishing a night tournament, but that meant that the bigger fish would be scattered out across the top of the coontail feeding during the night. Second, there was a chance of rain. We need rain desperately, and I would love nothing more than for us to get some good soaking showers. The barometer would be falling that morning, and there would be cloud cover making the fish bite very well. Those two elements would also cause those bigger fish that were deep in the grass to scatter a bit more. I can’t stress enough how thick the coontail is in this lake, so covering a lot of water and getting down where the bigger fish would be are mutually exclusive activities.
So, my original plan of starting off early in the morning fishing a topwater frog and covering a lot of water would be the same. What would change is what I would do when the sun got higher in the sky. To cover more water in that type of lake, I used a split shot rig with 1/0 hook, a Grande Bass baby rattlesnake in watermelon red, and since the water color was more heavily stained than when I pre-fished I colored the tip of the lure with a chartreuse yellow dye, and I crimped on a lightweight small split shot weight about 12 inches up the line. What this lightweight rig did was glide over the top outer edge of the grassline without getting snagged on the coontail, and it would fall slowly off the edge into the four to six foot water where the fish were holding. We were able to cover a lot of water quickly and targeted isolated patches of coontail. If you follow my Facebook posts, you noted that I had a limit of bass in the boat at 6:52am!
We launched the boat at 4:30am the morning of the tournament and headed to a spot on the far side of the lake where there was easy access to deep water, lots of coontail grass with a distinct breakline, and a bank that had been getting a lot of wind and waves blown into it the days prior to the tournament. Windblown banks are great, because waves oxygenate the water, and baitfish will be more plentiful there bringing with them big bass. Start fishing time was 5am. Not long after we started throwing the topwater frogs along the windblown bank, I had a BIG bass blow up on my bait. It sounded like someone threw a cinder block into the lake. I had the fish on for just a second, and it was a big one. But, he came unbuttoned pretty quickly. When fishing this technique, you’re going to miss fish. It just comes with the territory. I really hated to miss this one, though.
After moving to the windblown point I mentioned earlier that I found while pre-fishing, we started catching fish left and right. They were all “short fish,” and as I predicted those would be plentiful. It was so much fun! But, in a tournament you’re really fishing for just five good bites during the eight to nine hours you’re fishing. We were playing the percentage game hoping to add a couple of nice ones in the process of seeking smaller keeper size fish.
It was about 9:45am that our pattern started to improve. The sun was up high and hot, the clouds were scattered, and the wind picked up. In this case, we wanted the wind for a couple of reasons. First, it broke up the surface. This is a relatively clear water lake, and with the fishing pressure these fish were receiving we didn’t want to give them too much notice that a boat was in their neighborhood, and we didn’t want the fish to get too good of a look at our baits. We were looking for reaction strikes. Some anglers will think this is an odd way to think given the technique I was using, but let me tell you…I wasn’t soaking this bait too long in one spot. We were moving! Sometimes we were moving quickly back and forth in a space less than 75 to 100 yards long, but we were moving baits rather quickly to get them into those high percentage spots. Second, as I mentioned, windblown banks are good places to be. It created current, increased the oxygen levels in the water, it brings in baitfish (we saw LOTS of baitfish holding there), and of course the bass will move in, too.
I was wearing out those smaller fish, so when I saw my line start to swim off, rather than the hard tap of a bite I had been getting, I set the hook as usual. The big fish I set the hook on wasn’t having any and quickly surged to deeper water doing it so quickly that the rod I was lightly holding in my hand went flying out into the lake. In a flash, I saw the rod begin to disappear and begin to swim off, so I immediately dove in after it. I went under the surface and grabbed the rod down about two feet under water. I went to the surface quickly trying to get the rod out of the water and over my head to keep tension on the fish. He was still on there, and he was BIG!
While treading water, I quickly pushed my sunglasses back on my face and grabbed for my new Kistler hat that was floating nearby with my free hand. I could still feel the fish, and I started swimming back to the boat with the rod held high in the air. My co-angler was already reaching down to grab for me. The fish was suddenly gone. I grabbed the side of the boat, took up the slack on my line, and felt my heart break knowing that big fish had gotten away. It was then that I remembered I had not taken my wallet, keys, and cell phone out of my pocket and stowed them safely elsewhere in the boat as I normally did. Oops!
I got back in the boat, emptied my pockets, and started laughing with my buddy. A couple of other friends were fishing not too far from us down the bank. What a spectacle! Fishing is certainly an adventure, and we went on to continue catching fish. I only upgraded two of my five limit fish, but it was good enough for a third place finish, and our combined weights gave us second place team.
Taking a dip on a day that reached 103 degrees wasn’t too bad, either. And, leaving my cell phone on the hot boat deck with the battery out of it for the rest of the day dried it out well enough that I can make a call on it. The screen is ruined, it turns on and off by itself, but hey…it was still a perfect day. You may be able to predict how the fish will bite with some degree of confidence by reading and studying, but you can’t predict everything!
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