Turning Big Lakes Into Small Waters

Even the fastest kayak is still slow right?  Even with pedals and motors you're still not running and gunning main points on any lake in a reasonable amount of time.  That's why you need to increase your chance of success by shrinking big waters.  I personally fish Wheeler Lake a good bit during the winter and I try to shrink the lake by picking spots that provide me a good selection of structures and depths without having to spend all of my time paddling.  With tools like Navionics web app and Google Maps you can quickly find spots that have rip rap, creek channels, and stump flats within 2 or 3 square miles.  By fishing this target rich environment you can quickly pattern fish and figure out if they are deep or shallow and if they may be holding to rock or wood.  Once you have the pattern figured out then you can decide wether that 2 mile paddle to another stump flat or rip rap bank may be worth it.

I've never fished here even once, but it looks like it has a lot to offer in a small area.  Shallow stumps, creek channels, road beds, and rip rap with enough deep water nearby to keep fish during the winter and enough shallow cover to hold them during the spawn and throughout the summer.

The Difference Is Often In The Details

Every time I'm on the water I always want to take something away to help me be a better angler.   Sometimes it may be something as simple as increasing efficiency so I can get more casts in or it may be a certain presentation that I haven't tried before.  The other day I realized I was once again ignoring the details instead of following the clues.

I love a swim jig.  I've had one tied on since late fall and have been really successful with it catching multiple fish over 3lb., and a handful over 5lb.  That success sometimes blinds me to the fact that I need to tie something else on and not drag a lure down a grass line or by shallow stumps.  One particular scenario happened last week after a particularly cold snap, the water temps were struggling to get above 40 degrees even though this particular day the air was in the mid 50's.  I had marked shad on one deeper spot near a shelf and had tried a jerkbait, crank, and swimjig with no luck so I quickly gave up and moved on to fish how I wanted.  After searching the shallows with the swimjig and bouncing cranks off of rocks to no avail I finally decided to hit the reset button and ask what I was missing.  40 degree water?  They may not be willing to chase down a swimjig, so I set it down.  Shad holding at 10-12 feet?  Why am I running baits across shallow cover? 

The Strike King SwimJig was on fire in the fall for me, add a Keitech Fat Impact and hold on.

Recently the Damiki Rig (small jighead with a finesse bait) helped Jacob Wheeler win a Bassmaster Elite tournament on Cherokee lake targeting inactive smallies deep in cold water.  That little tidbit came to mind as I was looking at these fish suspended in deep water with a small school of shad over them.  Also knowing that we had just had a shad kill I knew the bass had likely been picking off dying shad for the last week or two. So in order to match the hatch as best I could I rigged a fluke onto a 1/4 ounce jig-head and lowered it down barely moving it over the bottom. Within minutes I had my first bite of the day, a 14" little bass, not a wall hanger but it was a bite that told me I was doing something right.  So I replicated the technique again and within minutes  a 17" fish was splashing at the surface beside the boat.

Damiki rig

So what was the takeaway?  I always want to listen to the fish, but sometimes you have to use the clues to get you within earshot so to speak.  Location, location, location, it applies to more than just real estate, and if you can't find the fish you can't catch them. Even if you are doing the perfect technique with the perfect bait.