A
re you tired of reading the
same old article about how to
fish brush piles? So is David
Dudley. Like, really tired of it.
“There’s so much misinformation
out there about brush piles because
guys say things that sound good,”
Dudley says. “Yeah, it may sound
good, but it’s not true.”
When Dudley gets passionate on
a topic and opens up about it, it’s
best to listen, because not only will it
often be spot on, it will often be bru-
tally honest.
Decades of planting brush piles
and fishing them have taught him
about how great (or just as often,
useless) they can be depending on
the situation.
“I’ve quit [planting brush piles],”
Dudley admits. “I used to put in all
these brush piles thinking I was cre-
ating these special spots. Most of the
time it was a waste of time.”
Let the honesty commence.
Are They Actually Good?
76
The above question might seem
like it has an obvious answer. Brush
piles are prime cover that attract
baitfish and bass alike, right? Anglers
plant them, fish them and win tour-
naments from them, right?
“They can be,” says Dudley. “But
it’s hard to beat natural cover.”
The natural stuff to which Dudley
is referring is actually cover and
structure – points, boulders, shell
beds, channel swings, rock piles –
basically, stuff that’s been there since
the creation of the lake or has
evolved as the lake has evolved. A
brush pile might be “natural” in that
it might be a tree cut right from the
shore, but brush piles are still fabri-
cated by anglers.
“Look, say you find a brush pile
sitting perfectly right on the end of
a point with a channel swing,”
Dudley explains. “Well, some guy
obviously planned that, thinking, ‘If
I put this brush here, I’ll go from
getting five bites to 10.’ That’s not
the way it works. What made that
spot good was the natural cover
already there. Putting the brush
pile there probably won’t make the
spot better, and it may make it
worse.
“Now, if you have some random
bare spot, and you put a brush pile
Modern sonar can quickly locate
brush and show where bass and
baitfish are hanging out, as seen
in this Lowrance screen grab.
on it, then it may actually attract
bass to it because there was nothing
to really attract them before.”
Just because you find or plant
some brush on a prime location
doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to
be the best brush pile you can fish in
a given day. It’s often those obscure,
off-the-beaten-path brush piles that
are actually good. Of course, that’s
assuming you’ve answered the next
question.
Which Species?
If you’re going to start game-plan-
ning for fishing brush piles, it’s best
if you figure out which species of
bass you’re targeting.
“Brush-pile fishing is species-relat-
ed,” says Dudley. “Where brush piles
really play a role in tournaments is
with spotted bass.”
But wait, didn’t Clent Davis win
the 2018 FLW Cup from brush piles
with largemouths? Yes, but that’s
because of how he game-planned
for them.
According to Dudley, what a brush
pile is to a bass is the same as a
refrigerator to a human: It’s a place
bass can hang out and grab food
that lives around (bluegills and crap-
pie) or swims by (shad) whenever he
wants.
Some humans are more willing to
share their food than others. Bass
are no different.
Spotted bass like to share. As
such, you’ll very often find a whole
school of spotted bass in and around
one piece of brush, taking turns on
whatever baitfish are hanging
around.
That’s not usually true of large-
mouths. According to Dudley, large-
mouths tend not to school on brush
piles like their spotted bass cousins.
“If you’re targeting spotted bass,
you may only need a few brush piles,
because they’ll have a whole school
of fish in each one,” Dudley says.
“But for largemouth, you better have
a lot of brush piles to run, because
it’s usually a one-fish deal.”
That was the case in the previous-
ly mentioned Cup win, as Davis
cycled through dozens of brush piles
each day, picking off one big one
here or there.
If you want a good way to think of
brush-pile fishing for largemouths,
equate it to fishing shallow stumps.
You usually only catch one good one
from each stump. If you hit a stump
again later in the day, it could replen-
ish and another bass might move on
it, but even then, it’s probably just
another one-catch-and-done scenario.
FLWFISHING.COM I SUMMER 2019