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Let's collect tips on finding bass. I'll start with a basic one. Use sonar to locate baitfish. That simple. No animal just wanders off into the blue yonder not feeding along the way. Even migratory birds make pit stops. Bass won't risk burning calories on a whim they will find forage. They follow forage. When baitfish begin to move off, the bass stay close behind, often tracking them from below a school. So rather than look for bass, find their food, which isn't found everywhere in a lake. Each species of forage animal tends to run together in schools or they remain as colonies (crayfish).
As a bass becomes more familiar with it's living range it knows a few "milk runs" where those colonies live, where baitfish congregate. Begin your search by thinking about the season. Right now most of the country is in post-spawn or early summer pattern. If post-spawn they are migrating back out away from spawning flats using creek "highways" to deeper water. If in summer pattern they have already returned nearly as deep as they over-winter, but in places very close to feeding flats, main lake points, ridges next to deep creeks, humps.
About 20% of bass chose to mostly remain shallow in flats under vegetation and other cover like docks. Use a paper map to study likely migration routes, circle some places with depth contour lines packed tightly together (indicating a steep slope), close to some structure (defined as something permanently part of the lake bottom), then run zigzag sonar courses across your target area until you find the baitfish. Using a floating marker or a quick GPS waypoint mark the first time you find them (a dark cloud of specks on screen) then when you zig past them. That could cover 1/4 mile along a ridge. Set a third marker at a best choice anchoring place (drop anchor, use drift socks, or using trolling motor), maybe out over deeper water, then begin casting into the target area trying different angles, plus trying from shallow to deep and moving boat to shallow and fishing deep to shallow. If the baitfish move keep up with them.
Jim
As a bass becomes more familiar with it's living range it knows a few "milk runs" where those colonies live, where baitfish congregate. Begin your search by thinking about the season. Right now most of the country is in post-spawn or early summer pattern. If post-spawn they are migrating back out away from spawning flats using creek "highways" to deeper water. If in summer pattern they have already returned nearly as deep as they over-winter, but in places very close to feeding flats, main lake points, ridges next to deep creeks, humps.
About 20% of bass chose to mostly remain shallow in flats under vegetation and other cover like docks. Use a paper map to study likely migration routes, circle some places with depth contour lines packed tightly together (indicating a steep slope), close to some structure (defined as something permanently part of the lake bottom), then run zigzag sonar courses across your target area until you find the baitfish. Using a floating marker or a quick GPS waypoint mark the first time you find them (a dark cloud of specks on screen) then when you zig past them. That could cover 1/4 mile along a ridge. Set a third marker at a best choice anchoring place (drop anchor, use drift socks, or using trolling motor), maybe out over deeper water, then begin casting into the target area trying different angles, plus trying from shallow to deep and moving boat to shallow and fishing deep to shallow. If the baitfish move keep up with them.
Jim