One more thing about baits. If everyone on the lake is fishing black and blue jigs, I will generally fish a jig of a different color, like brown, or pumpkin green in clear water, or maybe black and chartreuse if the water is murky. Big bass quickly become conditioned to artificial lures, and when they see lots of the same ones over and over, they may even spook just from the sight of the lure. So generally speaking, I try to fish something that is different. If chartreuse crankbaits are the hot lure, I may fish a big spinnerbait or jig instead. Remember, we are not trying to catch a lot of fish, just a few big ones.
And finally, you must have patience. You are not likely to catch a giant bass the first time you visit a new lake. It takes time to learn the lake, and time to learn the keys of that lake, the factors that produce good fishing for big bass. About 20 years ago, I learned about a lake that was kicking out a lot of big bass. I spent 4 hard years fishing this lake, and could not catch a bass over 4 pounds. Then one day I fished it under terrible conditions, 35 mph winds, air temps that started at 50 in the morning and went down from there, and rain. Within 2 hours I caught my first big one from this lake, an 8-4. The same day I also caught a 9-0 and had 20 bass that easily weighed over 70 lbs. I have now caught a number of bass over 9 lbs from this lake, including a 14.41 and 10 lb 12 oz northern strain bass. But still, even though I know the lake quite well, I may go for 3 days with very few bites, and then one day catch several big ones! It seems like when the big ones decide to feed aggressively, a lot of them do it at the same time.
I hope this article helps you in your hunt for big bass. There are exceptions to everything I have written here, but if you fish for exceptions you will catch very few big bass. I would also like to recommend a couple of educational materials for those interested in focusing on trophy bass. One is a book called "Tracking Trophy Bass" by John Hope, and the other is a video called "Bigmouth Forever" by Glen Lau. You can pick up some very valuable insights from these. I recommend viewing or reading them several times, there will be some details you will miss the first few times. |
