“STICK” A MARKER ON IT
Tracy Adams (right) believes you
can’t be fully prepared to sight-fish
in a tournament unless you know
which bass are “ready” to bite.
“I’m going to hunt those beds as hard as I can go. But a
lot of guys have the trolling motor on 100, and they go
and go, and they just hit a waypoint every time they see
a fish. Well, if you do that you don’t know if those fish will
bite. So I’m going to test them out and figure out which
ones I think I can catch on the first cast or the fifth cast
or in 20 minutes. Then [in the tournament] I start with
the ones that I think will bite first.”
Reading a bass on bed requires a great deal of skill
and experience. No two fish are the same, and there’s
not a single process that works every time.
Adams’ simplest bit of advice for determining if a fish
is “catchable” is to observe how it responds when the
boat approaches and the first cast is made.
“You’re looking for one that’s not moving much,” he
says. “If you’re going down the bank and see one that’s
just lying there and you turn and come back and it’s still
there, it’s pretty much ready. Or if you throw in there and
it kind of turns on the bait, it’s ready. If one spooks off,
it’s probably going to give you trouble.”
APRIL 2017 I FLWFISHING.COM
If you’re having trouble lin-
ing up a blind cast to a bass
on bed, try this trick that
Florida pro Darrell Davis uses.
“If I find one that I want to
fish for in the tournament, I’ll
pull up to it during the tourna-
ment and put a piece of bam-
boo in the ground by the bed,”
he explains. “Then I’ll just back
off and cast to that bamboo
instead of looking at the fish.”
Davis places the bamboo (a
tree branch works also, and is
inconspicuous to the competi-
tion) as he coasts by the bed
to avoid washing the bed with
the trolling motor.
His approach will spook the
bass, so Davis tries to mark
two or three beds in one area
to give the first bass time to
reposition. He then fishes for
them in the same order as he
marked them.
“I cast past the bed and
then pull up until I feel it,” he
adds. “You can usually feel the
bed, because it’s going to be a
harder bottom.
“When I hit that open spot,
then I just slowly work it like I
would if I was sight-fishing. I
just picture the bass the whole
time it’s in there. Normally you
don’t have to work the bass
very much.”
Florida pro JT Kenney is talented at reading bass on
beds, too, but his practice strategy is quite different from
Adams’ method.
“I just want to see them and know they’re there,”
Kenney says. “They change their attitude hourly. Ones
you think will bite, the next day you get close and they
swim away.”
That doesn’t mean Kenney is simply a waypoint
puncher. He’s just less concerned about how a bass will
act when a boat is close and the fish can see the angler,
which can spook the bass in the first place. Kenney
prefers to fish for them from a distance and prepares
accordingly.
“Probably 50 percent or better of my fish that I found
during practice that I marked, I caught [in the tourna-
ment] before I ever saw them,” he says.
In practice, Kenney takes notes on where beds are
located and identifies markers on shore or in the water
to use as casting targets. Once competition begins, he
lines up on his markers and blind-casts to the fish.
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