Bass Club Digest

Boat flush to a bluff, an angler holds steady in a modest current and makes a long cast parallel to the rock wall. Rod tip low, he cranks quickly and deliberately to get his bait down. Hidden beneath the surface, half a cast’s length away, an outcrop creates a small but distinct current break.

The angler, who opted to fish today’s team tournament alone, enjoys a perfect angle on a “sweet spot” that’s too small to share. He can hit the spot with every cast, and no buddy is left hanging in the current and out-of-reach of the fish. The bass are holding close to the bluffs, so he’ll spend the day working spots like this one, always positioning himself ideally for efficient casts.

Advantages of teaming up and strategies for working together have been well documented, and many pairs of anglers work together quite nicely. However, at times going it alone can provide added efficiency and offer a distinct advantage to an angler. Other times, circumstances dictate fishing alone or not fishing at all. Whether by determination or default, anglers must consider differences when they opt to fish alone and make plans accordingly.

Why Solo?

To realize the potential benefit of fishing alone, all most anglers need to do is look at open team tournaments and fruit-jar events on their home waters. Virtually every lake has an angler or two who shows up from time to time, always alone, and presents a real threat to win. Such anglers could easily find partners. They fish alone by intent and for reasons that go beyond not having to split the earning.

“Boat positioning is probably the biggest thing,” said Mike Kline of Franklin, Penn., a member of two bass clubs in northwestern Pennsylvania and a regular participant in river tournaments on the Allegheny River, which winds through his home town. “Fishing alone, you can set up exactly the way you need to for the best angles on every spot without any concern about whether your partner is in good position.”

Angles can be critical in rivers, where current dictates everything about how fish position themselves and the directions from which they look for their meals. Lake fishermen know, however, that the wind direction, sun position or orientation of a piece of cover can cause fish positioning to be equally important for flat-water fishing.

As any angler who fishes the amateur side of pro-am format tournaments knows all too well, the ideal boat position for presenting offerings from the front of the boat often leaves the person in the back of the boat with very few worthwhile casting opportunities. Sight-fishing situations; times when fish are in defined current breaks; and many ledge-fishing set-ups are just a few examples of spots that are often most effectively fished by a single angler.

In many cases, buddies fishing together and trying to share precise spots opt for “in between” boat positions, where both have a cast but neither is in the best position. The result is that neither ever puts baits in quite the right spots or presents them at quite the right angle, and a two anglers pull less fish from a spot than either of them fishing alone would have caught.

“Club tournaments are supposed to be fun, so you don’t want to position the boat so your partner doesn’t have good casts to the best spots,” Kline noted. “When you fish alone, don’t concern yourself with that.”

Working alone, an angler also can be quite efficient about picking a bank apart. Team fishermen who work along banks commonly try to leapfrog key spots, with each hitting every other one. However, it’s difficult to track which cover and angles a partner has already covered while at the same time remaining fully focused. Therefore, important casts too often go unmade. A solo angler knows what he has and has not hit and often can do a better job of covering everything that needs to be covered.

For some anglers, the biggest advantages are more mental than physical. Alone in a boat, a fisherman can devise strategies and carry them out, with no wavering caused by differing opinions. He knows every clue he has seen and what he believes he needs to catch, whether to win or to gain points in club standings. Likewise, some anglers can focus far better when they are on their own.

Even though solo fishing lends itself perfectly to many anglers’ personalities and could be a key to greater success, the concept goes so much against the grain of a “buddy tournament” that it’s one that often is not even considered. Even an angler who would thrive as a one-man show typically won’t try it because he’s convinced he would handicap himself.

A very real benefit of fishing an occasional solo tournament, albeit one that cannot be measured by tournament results, is a simple element of extra fun. Even for an angler who has an outstanding regular partner, a unique excitement stems from going it alone in every decision and being solely to credit or blame for a day’s outcome.

Ideal boat position for working a structure often would leave a partner hanging in the current, and most teams will sacrifice ideal positioning so both anglers can fish effectively. Fishing alone, even in a team event, solves that problem.

Of course, at times the biggest advantage of fishing alone is simply the ability to participate in a particular event. Although Kline has a friend who he regularly teams up with in tournaments, he won’t forsake the opportunity to compete in an event that fits his own schedule because his normal partner is unable to fish.

“In fact, there’s a club tournament coming up in a couple weeks,” he said. “My tournament partner has a conflict, so I plan to fish it by myself.”

Challenges & Solutions

The most obvious disadvantage of fishing a team tournament without a partner is having half as many lures in the water at all times. Beyond lessening the sheer volume of opportunity this can make it harder to test two colors or varied retrieves or to work two complementary baits at the same time. In addition, a net man is lost, as is an extra set of eyes to notice bait on the graph, busting fish, changes in water color and other important clues.

Although fishing team tournaments alone has undeniable drawbacks, it also provides definite advantages for certain anglers.

To compensate for extra challenges, a solo angler must put extra emphasis on planning and needs to fish efficiently. It’s vital to have the right arsenal of rods on the deck, rigged and ready, the landing net in very easy reach and a well-thought-out game plan. And sometimes that arsenal needs to be a little larger for a solo angler.

Kline noted that if he’s fishing with his regular partner, he’ll very rarely have a spinnerbait tied on. “He’ll cover that any time a spinnerbait might be a factor,” Kline said of his tournament partner. “I might have on a buzzbait and soft-plastic and he’ll fill in other stuff. If I’m fishing alone, I’ll make certain I have something tied on to fill all the needs.

Follow-up lures are terrific examples of extra considerations. When a bass misses a topwater plug, the same fish is much more likely to nab weightless soft-plastic bait fired back to the same spot than the same topwater plug worked over that spot again. Efficient teams often rig follow-up lures to complement one another’s primary baits. An angler working alone must have both categories covered, and it’s important to keep the follow-up lure within easy reach.

Finally, anglers fishing solo need to capitalize on one-man advantages. The capacity to fish from perfect angles, work shorelines efficiently and stick with a plan are only beneficial if an angler considers such opportunities and intentionally uses them in his favor. If he instead positions a boat out from a bluff and angles casts to fish that are snug to the rock – same as he would with a partner in the boat – he throws away any advantage he would have gained and might as well have another fisherman in the boat.

High-Low, Fast-Slow

Mike Kline of Franklin, Penn. likes a four-rod arsenal when he fishes alone. While the baits will vary by waterway and season, he wants baits that allow him to fish “high, low, fast and slow.”

When Mike Kline fishes alone, he’ll typically have four rods on the deck, each equipping him to fill a specific niche. One bait stays high in the water column for fish that are cruising shallow or looking up; another allows him to fish substantially deeper. A third is decidedly fast (could go high or low) to draw reaction strikes and capitalize on aggressive fish. A fourth is similarly slow.

Kline’s River Arsenal
HIGH – YUM Houdini Shad, weightless Texas Rig
LOW – Tube, internal jighead
FAST - Bomber 4A crankbait
SLOW – Drop-shot rig

Every Man for Himself

One-man-per-boat tournaments provide cool schedule diversions for clubs that typically operate under a team format. When only solo fishing is permitted, ever club member is forced to dig down and see what he has, and regular teammates get to go head-to-head. These tournaments can be especially fun on the club’s “home waters” because regular partners often fish similarly and share hotspots. Given their druthers, they would both start in the same spot, forcing one to make an early adjustment.
One-on-one events also provide extra challenges for anglers who do certain things very well but rely on the person in the other end of the boat to fill in gaps. Because everyone has to do everything, these are great tests of every club member.
Such events do not work well in any club that has a significant membership of non-boaters as too many members get excluded from any opportunity to participate.

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