Article & Images by Fran Myers
answer you have to be able to catch fish. Take a look at this picture.
My friend John caught this, not particularly big Largemouth Bass, a couple of years ago while fishing in Florida. The depth was around 10-12 feet. The time of year was August. At this point, everyone reading this article would presume that anyone could have caught the fish using any technique. But if I add the last fact that the fish didn’t strike until the speed of the lure was over 16k/h, would you still think anyone could catch that fish? Spoonpluggers have been catching HUGE over 10 pound fish at these speeds, and greater, since the early 70’s. Except for Marlin and Sharks has anyone ever heard of catching at those speeds? How would you know when to even try?
You won't be wasting any time by studying and applying Spoonplugging practices. You can greatly improve your catch. My friend Paul in South Africa, after reading some posts on the Internet, decided to STRETCH out of his comfort zone by fishing in a structure situation that I only described briefly. I don’t remember how many casts he made but by trying something different, he caught the biggest Bass he had ever caught. Not bad with just a little bit of reading.
Paul’s 1st Bass Caught while trying Spoonplugging
Here is a more personal, recent example. This whole season I have
been writing about a trip 6 of us took to Lake St. Clair last May. Most
of the stories were about how one person in our group followed
Spoonplugging guidelines which allowed us to catch over 600
Smallmouth, Walleye, Musky, and Northern Pike in 2 days.
However, this was not the highlight of the trip for me.
Look at this picture of a small section of Lake St. Clair:
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Caption: Small Section of Lake St. Clair
Luckily I was paired with John Bales. For w weeks John and I scoured different maps t trying to take this huge body of water and n narrow it down to 3 or 4 spots most likely o to produce fish. Spoonpluggers do a lot of p planning. We started fishing about 3.5km o off shore and worked our way south to this m mushroom shaped hump. We spent 4 o hours there. After casting and trolling we n ended up with 32 Smallmouth Bass. While w we had our smallest daily tally, we caught h the 32 BIGGEST Bass of the trip with an v average weight of 4 pounds.
What makes this achievement all the more important is the fact that we were fishing in depths of 8, 9, 10, 11 feet. These depth changes were so subtle that even StructureScan didn’t show them as massive depth changes. I learned the key to this spot with lures and how they FELT bumping across the bottom. There was a texture change in the bottom content that held the fish there. Once I felt the difference in the bottom, I made some adjustments on the StructureScan and was able to get a better picture of the bottom.
No one else fished that spot the whole weekend and we just happened to find them at the correct time. We tried the spot 3 other times and never caught another fish there.
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Caption: Author holding two fish caught while fishing hump on Lake St. Clair
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Caption: John Bales with more Lake St. Clair Smallmouth
You can catch fish like this and bigger if you learn a bit more. Next month I am going to start discussing the ‘Home’ of the fish.
Thanks for Reading!
Fran
Bass Digest/January, 2014