How To Find And Catch Fish Fast

Glenn: We have a customer.

Keri: Oh, goody. You got a little buck bass

Glenn: All right. Come here you. Got you you awkwardly. There we go.

Keri: He's a little football.

Glenn: Yeah, he's a little football.

Keri: He's eating though.

Glenn: He's good. He's got a little belly on him.

Keri: He's got a little belly.

Glenn: Thank you, guy.

Hey, folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com. And today I wanna talk to you about finding fish quick and getting on them so you can catch more fish during your day on the water. It really boils down to two pieces. One is your at-home research, and the other piece is on the water observations and adapting while you're on the water. So, let's get into it.

The first half is at-home research. And that actually breaks down to three different pieces. One of them is your historical information, researching historical information, the second one is map study, and the third one is your current conditions. Researching your current conditions as it pertains to your day of fishing.

So let's start with the first one, which is your historical information. And understand, this is not fishing history. There's kind of a negative connotation to the word history now in bass fishing. Fishing history pertains to, let's say you've done really well on a particular cove or a stretch of water on a particular lake, and, you know, last year, you caught a bunch of them on spinnerbaits and it worked really well for you during this time of the year, fishing history means you try to go back to that area and try to replicate it.

You're gonna go back with the spinnerbaits and you're gonna try to do the same thing and see if you can get the same results. That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about is getting historical information. You look at lake reports, you look at tournament reports, anything you can find over the past several years. Go back 5 years, 10 years, you know, as much time as you have in your hand, but the more years you go back, the better because what you're looking for is some commonalities and some trends. Things like, for example, during this time of the year, you find that in tournament reports, that quite often jigs and spinnerbaits tend to show up more often. In all these, who wins and what baits they're using. So, maybe that ought to be a couple of baits you might wanna have tied on to begin with. Just an idea. Or maybe it's topwaters, you know, something that keeps showing up over and over again throughout the years as being productive on this lake during this time of year, or river, whatever it is you're fishing.

Another commonality might be where they are, not so much where they are in the lake per se, but what, kinda, cover are they on, what kinda structure are they holding on?

Say, for example, this time of year you find them a lot outside weed edges, or maybe you find them on docks, or maybe they're holding on main lake points. Something to consider when you see this keep coming up over and over in lake reports and tournament results, that these fish keep getting caught on this particular type of structure or cover. Keep that in mind. It's, like, "Hey, this might be something worth checking out." And see if that is applicable to this time of year.

So that's the kinda research that I'm talking about. You're looking for these kinda trends, you're also looking for...say, for example, if there's weather change, or how the fish react to changing patterns. Say, for example, that just before a big front comes through on this particular lake, the topwater bite just blows up, man. It just takes off.

Okay, put that in your back of your mind. Just in case the front's gonna come through during your day of fishing or maybe the next day, maybe topwater bites might be something to consider. So just look for those type of...you know, when you see the same thing being repeated over and over for this time of year, in this kinda lake, that's the kinda thing we wanna pick apart.

Keri: There we go. It came out and got it that time.

Glenn: Nice.

Keri: Got him that time. Little sucker. I saw him. He come darting out from that bush, and said, "Hey, I wanna play with the Senko." I should say stick bait. It's a V&M, I believe. He is a cute little guy. Come hither. Come hither. I saw you darted right out from that bush and said, "I'll eat that." And that's what you did. You ate that. All right, little guy, go play. Have fun.

Glenn: Now, the next piece is map study. Take what you've learned, and now look at your map and start categorizing things. So, for example, you wanna look at main lake points, secondary points. I like to categorize these things by, not only main and secondary points, but also how steep they are. Take all the steep points, for example, put those in a category versus the ones that have a long-tapering points.

Also, I like to look at which ones are more of a north-south-facing orientation versus an east-west orientation. This is gonna come into play later on when you're on the water. We'll get to that in a second. But you wanna look at the humps, you wanna look at steep shorelines versus flats. Just get a general idea of where those areas are, especially if it says on those lake reports that "Hey, a lot of fish are being caught off humps this time of year. Just as an example, take a look at that.

The main thing you wanna do is, not only get an idea of where they're located, as related to, say, some are back in coves, some are in shallow areas versus deeper, some are bigger humps than smaller humps, but you also wanna look at the area surrounding those humps, where might those fish be if they're not on those humps, or if they're not on those points, or if they're not on those docks, where might those fish go? Get an idea of that sense of the surrounding areas.

Armed with that map information and with the historical information you just did, the next piece is looking at your information for current conditions. Obviously, that starts off with weather. You're gonna look at what's been happening over the past 20 days or so. And look for the general trends, not the major fronts and stuff that's come through, but is it on a general warming pattern, or is it generally going in a cooling pattern, or have things been relatively stable?

And then look at, like, the couple of days preceding the day you're gonna go fishing and maybe on the day you're gonna go fishing. Are conditions gonna change? Is the weather gonna do a dramatic warm-up, or cool-down? Is there gonna be a front coming through? Things like that, keep in your mind, and, like, how that's gonna play out and how that might affect the fish and position them. It may even affect their disposition during your day of fishing.

One of the things I like to do at this point is I like to open up an app called Bass Forecast. That app is pretty cool. It looks at exactly what I just told you. It looks at the trends, but it also looks at solunar times specific for your area, specifically for your lake.

Some of you guys, you know, don't put a lot behind solunar times. And part of that is because, in the past, they've all been printed by, you know, timezone. And that could be off as much as 45 minutes, maybe an hour to the location that you are specifically at. So they don't always jive with where you're fishing. So I can understand that it may put too much credence behind it, this app puts it GPS specific. So it is absolutely telling you what the solunar times are gonna be right for where you are fishing when you're fishing them, but also it takes into consideration other factors, for example, seasonality, what kinda cover might be available. It'll show you, like, what the fish might be holding on as far as structure, what kinda cover they're going to be using, what kinda lures you should be using for those different types of cover, also, what kinda speeds you may be...you know, your retrieve speeds. I mean, it gives you a bunch of information that helps, you know, as part of your overall research, to put that in your data bank and use that when you're out in the water.

Nothing's foolproof. So I'm not saying that this app is the end all be all, it's gonna tell you exactly what to do all the time, or that it's 100% accurate, but just like all these other factors that you've taken into consideration, this is another source of information to look into that can help you. I know for me personally, I've gone through all my research, and then I look at the app, and it might suggest a couple of other things, a couple of different areas to fish or a couple of different lures to try that I hadn't considered yet. So, yeah, worth putting it into your arsenal of information.

Keri: Here's a bass. Hold on, hold on. There he is.

Glenn: Geeze.

Keri: Just that fast. He saw it and he ate it. He's a little guy. He's not very big at all. There you go. All right, I'll let you go if I can get the hook out because I'm hook challenged today.

Glenn: A decent fish

Keri: Yeah. He's been spawned out, though.

Glenn: Oh, yeah, he is.

Keri: That's why he's probably so hungry. Hey, look at that. All righty...

Glenn: Good job.

Keri: ...good. Thank you, little guy.

Glenn: Now, once you've got all that together, your next piece is on the water, on the water adaptation. So the first thing you wanna do is break out your search baits. So these are things like Carolina rigs, split shot rigs, your crankbaits, spinnerbaits, jigs, those type of things. And you wanna start in the area where you think is gonna be really good based upon your research.

Start there, and now start to incorporate your powers of observation. For example, above the water, look at the topography of the lake and what type of vegetation is on it, and imagine that going underneath the water. If you're on a reservoir that fluctuates with different levels, it's possible that if there's a bunch of bushes on the shoreline, then maybe there's some submerged bushes under the water, or if it's on a rocky shoreline, it's probably gonna be rocky underneath the water.

Start to get that idea, plus look at your cloud cover, your light penetration conditions, how much wind you have. Look at the water clarity. Did you have a lot of rain prior to your day of fishing? And maybe the waters clouded up or muddy, or maybe it's a lot clearer than normal. Has it changed in any way, or is it different from what it normally is?

Look at vegetation. Is it emergent or submergent? What kind of vegetation is there? How thick is it? Are there weed lines, and what depth are the weed lines? You know, use your powers of observation to kinda put together: these are the things that aren't on the maps, these are the things that aren't gonna show up in your at-home research that you can add on top of all the information you've already gathered when you're at home.

Combine that with your underwater eyes, your sonar. If you're going over humps, points, any underwater structure that you've marked on your map, now you wanna look for things that don't show up on that map. For example, are there stumps on it, maybe some big boulders, or a rock pile? Maybe there's an anomaly, where it goes down and maybe it bumps up all of a sudden then starts going down.

Maybe there's some sunken logs or debris or something like that, maybe there's a patch of weeds on one part of the structure versus the other. These are the things you wanna take into consideration while you're fishing it. Now, when you catch a fish, this is when it all starts to come together. We have a customer.

Keri: Another one.

Glenn: There we go.

Keri: It must be the jig strike today.

Glenn: Hello.

Keri: It's gotta be the jig strike today.

Glenn: He is mad.

Keri: Ooh, he's mad. He's mad.

Glenn: All right, give me your face. Thank you. Not bad. I could take these all day long, you know.

Keri: All day long.

Glenn: Especially in the summer when you're catching little dinks, it'd be fun. All right. Hey, little buddy. Yeeha.

Hopefully, you're paying attention because that fish is talking to you. It's telling you a lot of information. How he was positioned on that structure? Where he was positioned on that structure? What made him strike? What lure you were using? What was the speed of retrieve you were using? Was he on the shady side, was he on the sunny side of the structure? Was he on the windy side or the leeward side? Was he buried in weeds, was he on a weed edge? Was he on a rock? So on and so forth.

Now, based upon your at-home research, this is where I take things and I look at 'em in position to north-south and east-west, is because now when you start catching fish, "Oh, hey, I caught 'em on the shady side of deep points on the weed edge." Well, that's kind of a north-south-facing point. Now, I know where the rest of those are in the lake, and I can go just fish those.

And now I've taken a 30,000, 40,000-acre lake, with 17 points, and I've narrowed it down to 6 points, and specifically a specific area on those points, right? That's how you use all this information to narrow down where these fish are and how to catch 'em. And that's gonna make you a lot more productive on the water, a lot more efficient, and you're gonna catch a lot more fish that way. I hope those tips help. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com