Pick an area and stay with it when you’re fishing in a tournament (or try this approach if you just want to catch some bass at a lake during a weekend of fun fishing).
It’s a hard strategy for me to use, but it’s often the best one.
If you become intimate with an area, you can adapt quickly to changing conditions without wasting time running around. No, you don’t have to jump out of your boat and hug your favorite rock pile to be intimate — you just need to know it’s there.
Case in point: Todd Faircloth.
He recently finished second during the Angler of Year race on the Bassmaster Elite Series. He focused on smaller areas of lakes, resulting in a remarkable year.
“This year I really didn’t concern myself with practicing the whole lake,” he said. “I picked a couple areas and learned them well. I think that was the key to my success this year.”
“Many times you find a particular cover or situation you can’t find anywhere else that the fish really relate to,” said Ish Monroe, 2009 Bassmaster Classic qualifier. “This is a good reason to stay. At one recent event, I found one levee that water was flushing through. Tthere were 25 levees in the area and that was the only one with water flow.
“There was a concentration of fish and no reason to leave. Especially in tough events, it’s an advantage to stay around if you know there are fish in the area. Just grind them out. The old saying goes ‘Never leave fish to find fish.’ ”
Like Monroe, I usually don’t put limits on what I do or don’t do during an event, I just let them happen.
Looking back I had a good year and most of the events I focused on one or two areas rather than running around pattern fishing.
By sticking to an area or two, you’ll likely be consistent. It’s very hard to run and gun every event and be consistent.
Sticking to an area you can monitor what spots are getting fishing pressure and what spots aren’t. You can let areas rest you’ve fished and hit community holes when the pressure has been off for a couple of hours.
When running around a lake, you never know if your area has just been fished recently. I watch this all the time while sticking to an area.
A boat pulls up and fishes hard for an hour then leaves, another boat pull on the same spot right after it leaves never knowing it was there. Often the fish will be spooky for a while at a spot after it has been fished.
When I talk about sticking to an area, it is all relative. It could be a creek or cove; it could be a series of points or a row of docks.
Areas with some sort of structure nearby are usually better as fish will replenish.
At a recent event at Kerr Lake I was catching some fish that were dark green and had been shallow for a while. Others were almost silver and had most likely been suspended in open water recently, but moved up to feed.
If you’ve got good structure nearby, fish will filter in daily and surprise you when you think you’ve caught them all.
Finally, sticking to an area allows you time to take risks with your lure choices without abandoning everything. Sometimes small adjustments or a drastic change can yield results.
If there is an isolated piece of cover you can check several times a day with a different lure each time — by all means try it. Some bass aren’t susceptible to certain lures. Switching it up could be a winner.
If you’re running around a lake instead of fishing, you may not have time to come back to one particular spot and try something else.
Dustin Wilks is a 31-year-old professional bass angler and Raleigh native now living in Rocky Mount. He has qualified for the Bassmaster Classic four times and operates Fish Like a Pro Fishing Lessons (252-883-6749, www.fishlikeapro.com ). His sponsors include Assassinator Spinnerbaits, Chatterbuzz, Skeeter Boats, Yamaha, Daiwa, Keelshield and Culprit.
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