Bass Fishing Apr 2017 | Page 57

“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. 55