One of bass
fishing’s biggest challenges is catching fish on a body of water
you’ve never seen before. If your club visits the same close-by
lakes year after year, this isn’t something you have to cope
with on a regular basis.
However, many clubs occasionally travel to new destinations,
especially for year-end championship events. If your club is
affiliated with a larger organization, you may qualify for a
regional or national tournament far from home. And, many club
fishermen travel to new destinations on vacation, often a
storied lake they’ve dreamed about fishing for years.
Even the most bountiful bass waters can be puzzling the first
time you try them. The water color, the cover and structure, the
time of year, and many other factors influence where bass locate
and what types of lures they’ll hit at any given time.
If you arrive without any background information, it can take
days to tune into the fishery. What usually happens is that you
finally figure the bass out on the last day of a tournament or a
vacation when it’s too late to capitalize on what you’ve
learned.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get the inside scoop about a
distant bass lake before you leave home? This would insure that
you pack the right lures and tackle, and that you start out
fishing proven patterns and places. You say you don’t have those
kinds of contacts? Nonsense. If you own a computer that’s
connected to the Internet, you can find a wealth of bass fishing
information online.
One of the most helpful sites is
www.bassfan.com. Here,
you’ll find daily reports of major bass tournaments across the
country. Most of these events take place on large bodies of
water that can accommodate a large field of anglers. If you’ll
be fishing a big impoundment like Lake Guntersville, a large
natural lake like Champlain, one of the Great Lakes, or a major
river system like the Potomac River, hit
www.bassfan.com first.
Professional tournaments typically last three or four days,
and the front-runners are usually tightlipped about how and
where they’re catching bass. They don’t want to tip their hand
to the competition. That’s why fishing information is sketchy
until the tournament is over.
However, after the final weigh-in, the top five finishers
gush about the baits and tactics that produced their heavy
catches. From this report you can glean several productive
patterns. Though the anglers normally don’t say exactly where
they were fishing, they’ll usually reveal general areas. They’ll
often mention a specific bay, creek, or section of a lake.
The point is that the final day’s report is the pot of gold.
BassFan also does follow-up reports after a tournament to
squeeze even more tips from the tournament winner. You couldn’t
buy fishing information like this, but it’s free on the
Internet.
Be sure to check the results of tournaments that took place
on a given body of water at the same time of year you’ll be
fishing there. This is were BassFan’s archives are invaluable.
You can go back to July of 2001 and access tournament results
month by month.
For example, if you’re going to Kentucky Lake in July, you’ll
find the results of five major tournaments that took place at
Kentucky Lake during that month. You’ll discover that it often
takes 20 or more pounds a day to win, that fishing main lake
ledges with jigs and soft plastic baits is the predominant
pattern. You’ll also learn that the southern reaches of Kentucky
lake produces many of the winning catches.
Several other worthy bass fishing sites also provide
excellent information. At
bassfishinghomepage.com there are links to fishing reports
of bass waters across the country, tournament results, and more.
At basszone.com you’ll
find extensive coverage of professional and regional
tournaments, a message board, and classifieds, to name a few of
their many features.
The bassmaster.com and
flwoutdoors.com sites
report only the results of tournaments hosted by Bassmaster and
FLW Outdoors respectively. Their reports of ongoing tournaments
reveal all the priceless information you’re looking for. Both
organizations archive past tournaments on their web sites.
If you’ll be fishing a smaller body of water that rarely, if
ever, hosts a big time tournament, take heart. You’ll have to
dig a little harder, but you can find valuable information on
the Internet. Bass nut Troy Armstrong of Charlotte, North
Carolina, has practically made a science of researching bass
lakes on the Internet. This information has proven invaluable to
his tournament efforts, and it now helps his wife Michelle, who
is currently fishing the Woman’s Bassmaster Tour.
Though Armstrong has fished tournaments mainly in the
southeast, Michelle’s tour has taken them across the country to
lakes neither of them have seen. If he can’t find anything about
the place he wants to fish on the web sites already mentioned in
this article, he does searches on the
google.com web site.
Some satellite photos on Google Earth show
remarkable detail.
“When I do a Google search, I’ll type in something like, bass
fishing on lake so-and-so,” Armstrong says. “The first couple of
pages that pop up might not have what you need. But, if you keep
digging through the pages, you’ll often hit on some local bass
club sites.”
Tournament reports on bass club web sites generally aren’t as
detailed as those on bass sites that are run for profit. But,
they do provide nuggets of gold. Some tournament results list
only the standings and the weight of the individual catches.
Though it isn’t much, it does tell you what kind of weight it
takes to do well on that body of water at a given time of year.
If you see that most of the anglers weighed limits, you can
assume that the lake has strong bass population. If many anglers
failed to catch a limit and there were a good number of zeros,
expect the fishing to be tough.
Armstrong also checks tourism sites for the body of water he
plans to fish. Though these sites usually have limited fishing
information, they often have scenic photos of the lake. These
images give him a feel for the topography of the lake and
whether its shoreline is covered with docks or undeveloped.
Free satellite photos provide Armstrong with especially detailed
images. He goes to google.com
and does a search for “earth.” This brings up a page where
“Google Earth” is the first listing. Click on it and you’ll go
to a site where you can download a free program called Google
Earth. This remarkable program lets you zoom in on satellite
images of anyplace on earth, including bass waters.
The detail of these images varies from place to place. With
many bass waters, you can see the outline of the shoreline and,
perhaps, matted grass beds. Some waters, especially those near
major population centers, have incredible detail.
The satellite photos of Lake Norman, Armstrong’s home lake,
clearly show where every home and dock is situated along the
shoreline. “The photos have so much detail, I can even look for
certain types of docks,” Armstrong says. “I’ve used Google Earth
to find standing timber, weed beds and backwaters on other
lakes.”
The Internet also keeps Armstrong abreast of changes in the
water temperature, water level and the current (at power
generating reservoirs). All these factors influence bass and how
you must fish for them. In the spring, rising water temperatures
pull bass shallow and make them more active. Falling water
anytime can push bass out of shallow cover. And, bass on main
lake structures turn on when a power-generating dam creates a
current. Armstrong checks this information every evening to help
him stay one step ahead of the bass.
Reservoirs managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers post
this information on the Internet. For example, if you Google
“Kerr Lake water levels” you’ll find a link to a daily report
from the Corps of Engineers. It gives the water temperature, the
lake level, and how much water is being pulled through the dam.
They also forecast the water level day-by-day for the following
week. This tells you if the water level will be rising, falling,
or will remain stable.
The weather, of course, also influences how and where you
must fish for bass. Wind and clouds often put bass on the prowl
and make them susceptible to spinnerbaits, whereas a still,
sunny day after a cold front can make finesse fishing with
something like a drop-shot more productive. Many weather-related
web sites exist. A good one is
weather.com, the official site of The Weather Channel.
You’ll especially like the hour-by-hour forecast that tells you
when the weather is going to change during the day. This helps
you anticipate what the bass will be doing.
