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WEEKDAY VS. WEEKEND BASS By Mark Hicks
Anyone who fishes on weekdays and weekends knows bass are
schizophrenic. Bass club anglers often catch bass like crazy
during weekdays, but struggle when they fish on the weekends,
especially when competing in tournaments. One major reason bass
change personalities is the boat traffic and fishing pressure
that assaults many lakes on the weekends.
Greg Marshall, president of the Kentucky Bass Federation
Nation, has seen bass repeatedly shut down on the weekends. A
classic example happened when he fished Percy Priest Reservoir
in April of 2007 while practicing for and competing in the
Bassmaster Bass Club World Championship Region 3.
As part of a six-man Kentucky team, Marshall started
pre-fishing Percy Priest on the Monday before the tournament.
Fishing was good. Bass were jumping on spinnerbaits, shallow
crankbaits and Senko-type plastic baits. Marshal found a few
shallow pockets where he could catch bass early. The rest of the
day he concentrated on steep channel banks and bluffs.
“There were probably about 80 people practicing for the
tournament that week,” Marshall says. “Then, starting on Friday,
we had the weekend traffic to contend with.”
Marshal claims the fishing pressure from the tournament
anglers alone was enough to undermine the bass bite. The numbers
and the size of the bass that he and his club members were
catching steadily declined throughout the week. The weekend
onslaught made the bite just that much tougher. Marshal hung in
and finished sixth with 10 bass that weighed 17-pounds,
10-ounces.
Marshall has obviously learned how to cope with fishing
pressure and the resulting skittish bass. When he finds other
anglers fishing a place he found during practice, he keeps his
cool and joins the crowd. Many fishermen psych out and choose to
go elsewhere rather than fish in a cluster of boats. Or, they
fish the spot for a few hours and leave if they’re struggling to
get bites.
Though you surely get away from other fishermen when you
leave a crowd, you also leave the bass you’ve found. If you stay
with the bass, it’s likely that most of the other anglers around
you will grow frustrated and leave. You may have the spot
practically to yourself for the latter half of the day. And,
with fewer boats around, you might be treated to a late feeding
spree.
Marshall typically adjusts to crowded fishing conditions by
changing his presentation. Say, for example, that he found bass
by flippin’ a jig or a Brush Hog to flooded bushes during the
week when nobody was around. If other anglers are fishing his
bushes on the weekend, he might flip a smaller 6-inch finesse
worm. He figures the bass are still in the bushes, but that
they’ve grown leery of big baits due to the fishing pressure. He
still gets bites by downsizing his offering.
“If I see a crowd where I want to go, I usually stick with my
fish,” Marshall says. “I’ll just do something a little bit
different.”
If he found bass on a spinnerbait during the week, Marshal
starts with a this type of lure when he fishes in a crowd on the
weekend. But, again, he shows bass something different.
Consider a tournament on Kentucky Lake where Marshal was
plucking bass from grass beds with a spinnerbait that sported a
turtleback blade behind a small Colorado stripper blade. He
smoked the bass while fishermen around him got few bites on
spinnerbaits that had standard Colorado and willow leaf blade
combinations.
“I was just whacking the bass with that turtleback bladed
spinnerbait,” Marshall says. “It gave the bass a different look
from what everybody else was throwing.”
Like most fishermen, Marshall loves to catch bass on top. He
might fish topwater baits on weekdays while fun fishing, or to
locate bass while practicing for a tournament. But, he rarely
does so on weekends. He claims that the topwater bite is too
unpredictable, and that it’s the first thing to dry up when a
lake is overrun with boat traffic and fishermen.
“Even if I catch bass on something like a buzzbait or popper
in practice, I’ll start in the same area with subsurface bait on
the weekend,” Marshall says. “I’ll usually do better with
something like a Senko or a shaky head worm.”
If he can find bass on offshore structure, Marshall believes
he has an advantage on the weekend. He claims that many anglers
don’t know how to fish offshore, and that these fishermen are
stuck fishing shallow in crowded water. Since offshore bass see
fewer lures, they are more inclined to bite on the weekends.
The problem with fishing offshore on the weekend is boat
traffic. On lakes that get heavy traffic from cruisers and water
skiers, you’ll need to lean on a pole seat to avoid being tossed
overboard. The incessant waves make it challenging to hold
within casting range of ledges, brush piles and other deep bass
hideouts. But, the effort often pays off with heavy catches.
On power-generating reservoirs like Kentucky and Barkley
Lakes, current flow caused by the turbines puts offshore bass on
the feed. The bass typically suspend over deep water near creek
and river channel ledges when there is no current, which makes
them hard to find and catch. When the dam sucks water for the
turbines, the ensuing current draws bass to the ledges where
they nab baitfish.
The turbines operate on a fairly regular schedule during the
week to generate power for businesses and factories. Anglers who
are tuned into the schedule and know the locations of productive
offshore structures can practically call their shots on the
weekdays. However, the need for power generally subsides on the
weekends. This results in little or nor current and a slow bass
bite.
When the current rolls on the weekdays, Marshall often makes
hay by cranking channel ledges and deep brush piles with
Norman’s Deep Little N and DD-22. A Carolina rig with a Zoom
Ultra-Vibe Worm also scores well then. He fishes the same places
on the weekends when the water is slack, but slows down and
tempts bites with a shaky head jig and a drop-shot rig.
“You have got to adjust on the weekends,” Marshall says. “On
sunny days, the bass will hold to the cover without the current.
On cloudy days they’re more likely to suspend away from the
cover.”
If the bass are suspended, Marshal relies on a drop-shot rig.
He looks for bass with his graph to determine where they are and
how high they are suspended above the bottom. Then he lets his
drop-shot rig sink straight down to the bass. If the bass are
suspended well above the bottom, his drop-shot weight never
touches down.
You can’t beat weekdays for catching bass and for finding
fish before a tournament the following weekend. Just don’t get
stuck on weekday patterns when the weekend rolls around. You’ll
probably need to show the bass a more subtle bait on the
weekends, but they’re likely to be right where you found them
during the week.
REPEATED CASTS
If there’s ever a time to make repeated casts to a piece of
cover, it’s on the weekends. This is when fishing pressure makes
bass reluctant to bite the first thing that passes through their
strike zone. You can often make these bass bite by repeatedly
running the same lure past them.
Try retrieving a spinnerbait down the same log, or a buzzbait
over a brush pile a dozen times or more. Also, repeatedly bump a
crankbait over a particular stump or drop-off. The bass
eventually become aggravated by the bait, or maybe they lose
their fear of it. Whatever the reason, the eventually pounce on
it.
UGLY BANKS
You’ll often catch more bass on weekends by fishing what some
anglers call ugly banks. These are typically banks that have no
obvious bass cover on them. Most fishermen flock to banks dotted
with boat docks, adorned with windfalls, or covered with flooded
bushes, grass, or some other obvious bass cover. Obvious cover
usually holds bass, but these fish know every bait made by brand
and model number.
Ugly, nothing banks may not hold as many bass as banks that
have ample cover, but the bass that live there see few lures and
are more inclined to bite. Also, when you fish ugly banks, you
often find isolated pieces of cover, maybe a submerged stump or
log, that can’t be seen by fisherman as they boat through the
area. Because the cover is isolated, any bass roaming that bank
is likely to stop there. This makes it a high percentage spot to
get a bite.
OFF-COVER BASS
Sometimes obvious bass cover gets fished so hard that it
drives bass away. This happened once during a springtime
Bassmaster tournament on Lake Norman, North Carolina, where the
main pattern was fishing boat docks. After the docks had been
pounded for three practice days and two tournament days, they
gave up few bass.
Many of the bass had been caught. But, Texan Zell Rowland
realized that some of the fish had moved away from the docks and
were hanging near the shoreline between them. He fished a
jerkbait in the open water between the docks and won the
tournament.
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