Many anglers have been catching fish in the shallow waters of the shorelines and have been doing fairly well at that. But now as spring is further along and fading into the past those shallow waters have warmed up considerably and these fish may be on the move.
Spring time fish are generally found along the shorelines doing their yearly spawning ritual and replenishing the lakes with new offspring for the years to come. After the spawn the females leave the shallows first and then the males will follow once the fry reach a certain size and don’t
need the male’s protection any longer.
When both of these fish have vacated the shallows, this is the time that anglers struggle for a while trying to locate fish. These fish are still in the generally same area but are relating to different types of things at this time. They leave the shallows and head for deeper water and this can entail anything from the first weed line to different water depths.
Since the water is warming nicely, they will start moving towards their summer haunts and these areas are where you need to focus your energy in search of fish. Flats out from the spawning areas are great resting places as well as feeding areas as the fish still need to eat to survive.
Working these flats is a great way to locate some fish and the flats that have clumps of weeds on them with open sandy areas around them are great attraction areas to fish. What we are looking for are areas that the weed growth has started but doesn’t grow into a big area of continuous weeds. Pods of weeds are great ambush places for these fish to sit and rest waiting for an unexpected meal to come by.
Plastic baits are a good choice to working these areas and a few different techniques work very well. A Texas rigged plastic bait, a weightless plastic bait and also the Carolina rig works very well in this situation. For the Texas rig any type of plastic worm or creature bait will work very well as well for the weightless baits. The Carolina rig works very well with creature style baits and also some finesse plastics as well.
The waters are still a little cool so working these baits somewhat slowly works very well and also the slow presentation is something that these fish may not have see that often. Many anglers fish to fast and are missing a lot of bites because of this, but don’t get the wrong idea, there are still times when burning these baits produces better than anything else.
If these flats aren’t producing that well then it may be time to move to the next deeper feature. This can be a drop off, ditch, hump, or just about anything in deeper water. These areas may not be quite their summer haunt areas yet but are the in between “season” places. To many times anglers don’t like to fish deeper water but by changing your tactics a little, these may turn into your favorite places to fish.
Underwater points are a great place to search for fish and finding the tip of these underwater points can be very productive. “Just had that happen recently as the flats weren’t producing very well and decided to look at a nearby underwater point. The water at the tip was 11-12 feet deep and by working a Carolina rig around this point, put a few fish in the boat in a short period of time”.
If I wouldn’t have tried that there would have been only one fish caught on that outing as I went back to the flat and tried again later and nothing was there willing to bite. By trying these different areas you will learn some new waters as well as some new ways to fish different baits.
In general my type of fishing is mainly deep water and struggle some in the shallow spring time areas. But once the spawn is over and they start moving out, then the fishing season really kicks into gear for me.
Next time that you head out and are not finding the fish in the shallow waters, move out some and look for something that is a little different. Each year these fish use different areas or relate to the same areas a little differently and by using your electronics as your underwater eyes and search around these spots, this will put a lot more line tugging days on your side.
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1 comment:
Good Advice.
It has been a fairly cold Spring so far here in my neck of the woods in Minnesota. It's quite possible that the bulk of this years spawn just happened with the full moon, but we were in the grips of a nasty cold front, so some fish may have backed off. I am guessing because of the weather both this year and last years spawn were not very good one's. However the lakes do seem to have an abundance of 10-13 inch fish, so the outlook for the forseeable future is pretty good.
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