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Glug – Splish – Glug – Splish…KABOOOSH!!!
This is, my friends, time for topwater froggin’ on bass lakes all across the country and it’s one of the most exciting types of fishing you’ll ever do. When a big bucketmouth blows up on your lure, your heart is guaranteed to skip about three beats!!
How do you catch bass on a lake you’ve never fished before?
I posed that very question to our intrepid bass expert, Big Fred Contaoi the other day. A valid topic, I figured, as he has been fishing a bunch of new waters in his first two seasons as a pro on the FLW Wal-Mart Tour for Orange County Choppers.
Many of the tournaments he’s been fishing have been on bodies of water that Fred had never laid eyes on before. Most have been quite unlike the lakes of the West that he has cut his teeth on. So, what the heck do you do in that situation?
In Fred’s case, he can only practice for a short time on a tournament lake. So, he often practices on other lakes in the area when the one that the tournament will be held on is off-limits.
“For example, my first-ever tournament on Tour was at Florida’s Lake Okeechobee,” he says. “The first thing I did was fish a nearby lake — Lake Toho — so I could get a feel for the fish in this general area,” he said (he caught a nice 8-pound largemouth that day). “Then, I drove my truck around Lake Okeechobee for a couple days to just check things out and talked to people at local tackle shops, etc.”
Fred says that, when you’re chatting up the local experts, ask them about the size and color of the forage that the fish are on and what sort of cover they like in the lake.
When it was finally legal for him to begin pre-fishing, Fred simply got out on the water and started sniffing around.
“You have to remember that bass are still bass no matter where they live and they all have the same basic needs like food and shelter,” he says. “Once you figure out what they like to eat and where they like to live, you can set up a game plan.”
It’s not a bad idea to also try to set up a couple “emergency plans” in case you get a sudden change in weather between the time you’re practicing and tournament day. For example, poll the locals about stuff like where the area’s bass go when a sudden cold front moves through (think deep water) or what happens when the north wind blows on that particular lake.
You can also do some research online too. You can learn a lot about the many types of fish in a particular area by using the internet.
When you’re going to try a new water for the first time, hiring a guide isn’t a bad idea. You can learn more in a day with a guide than you could in weeks of doing it on your own. Depending on what part of the country you’re in, a guided bass trip can run you $125 to $250 per person…money well spent, to be sure.
They’re big, realistic and expensive, but big bass truly love swimbaits. If you’re looking to get into this ever-growing craze, here’s a partial list of top baits to get you started…
Ten and a half inches long and weighing a full 7 ounces, 3:16 Lure Co.’s “The Armageddon” is not a bait for anglers with weak hearts. While you may not get a ton of bites on a giant bait like this, the ones you get are likely to be very big.
So you’ve been out there bass fishing for years and years and haven’t caught anything over 10 pounds. You feel like you’ve been doing everything right because you always seem to catch fish, but just not the big dogs. What gives? Well, read on, my big bass-free friends!
Weedbeds are good; docks and lily pads, too. Rock piles and creek channels, and all the rest…
But sometimes, sometimes….the best (and often overlooked) big bass haunts are less obvious.
Instead of finding a lunker largemouth on the “name brand” types of spots like a rock heap, you may find one, lonely boulder that holds fish like crazy. Or it could be just a small finger off a creek channel or a random post like this one.
One of the reasons these non A-List spots can be so productive is…
