Learning New Waters

Anglers get stuck in a habit of fishing the same waters over and over again and get into a comfort zone that they tend not to want to try other locations. By trying different waters as well as different scenarios, lakes vs rivers, this in the long run, makes an angler more versatile and able to adapt more quickly for finding fish at newer locations.

Not having much experience on fishing river systems, we have been frequenting one such system a few times already with more trips planned. The stretch that we have been trying to learn is above the dam, so there is some water movement and many of the banks have a steep drop.

One key that we are seeing more frequently is that by continually mapping every time that we are out, we are finding some locations that have shallower shoreline shelves scattered around and those have been key locations so far this year for finding fish. Most of these areas have been in the 3-6 foot range and there is an abundance of weed and wood in the water as well.

So far, have been using search baits, like the Salmo shallow divers, and this is allowing us to cover more water and in turn, the more water you cover, the more you learn about those stretches. The steeper shorelines have been having smallmouth on them and those shallower shelves is where the largemouth and northern pike have been.

One thing that you definitely notice, is that the river fish always seem to have more fight in them and also, there may be other species that are caught as well. Our area doesn’t have northern pike in them, but we did have a very nice one that we lost boat side on the last trip and that definitely made for some exciting moments.