The Bass Insider Issue 1 September the old river bank, the bass feed along such edges, and they move off the drop and down into deep water when they’re not feeding or when they feel threatened. Next, look for different or unusual places along these structure edges. An example would be a few meters of bank that are a little higher than other banks in the same stretch of channel. Or it could be a stretch of bank with tree stumps washed up on it, or it could be a stretch of bank that have vegetation growing on it, a place where the channel bends, where the creek empties into the river channel, a hump or sunken island in the channel or where the bottom content changes from mud to gravel or sand, ANYTHING different from the majority of structure along the channel. Be aware of water clarity and the fact that bass hold near shallower structure in murky water and deeper structure in clear water. Use the following a rule of thumb, in a dam where your visibility is from 30 cm to 2 meters, most fish will stay in 10 to 30 foot of water, assuming that the oxygen content is sufficient at these depths. Time of day may affect bass locations. If suitable structure is available in a range of depths, bass may hold shallower in the mornings and late afternoons, then slide deeper in the middle of the day. The venue that comes to mind taking the above in consideration is a dam like Tzaneen dam. If you ever fished a tournament at Tzaneen you would have noticed that 90% of the anglers do what I call “bank bashing.” I have spent a considerable amount of time on this dam, studying topographic maps and searching with my depth finder. Fishing channels in this dam produced better quality fish for me. One particular channel that I can see in my mind right now are very interesting, from my boat looking at the bank I see a sand bank on both sides of a creek, the creek is not very long, from the main dam points probably 150 meters to the back of the creek. Yet when I check the creek channel I see a massive amount of brushes, trees and a hard bottom. The creek runs from 3 foot of water into 22 foot of water when it drops into the river channel. I religiously fish this creek when on the dam and this creek has accounted for many a fish, sometimes I get 2 fish sometimes I get my limit here. One particular tournament I stopped my boat about 300 meters before the creek and started fishing top water on the sand bank approaching the creek, before I reached the creak I had 5 fish in the boat and my partner 3 fish, YES on the sand bank! We did not bother to fish the creek as we wanted to leave fish for day 2. These fish were obviously in the process of migrating to the creek and my timing was perfect!
8|Page