Pick It Apart


                                                                       Pick It Apart

There isn’t a more important skill In kayak fishing than being able to maximize a small area. This can be a double edged sword, though. Knowing the area to devote attention to is just as important as being able to pick that area apart.

                This week I’ll dive into how I go about picking a good “kayak area” and once that area is established, being able to catch as much as possible.

If you follow tournament fishing, you will at some point hear the term “being too spread out.” What this means is that an angler has too much going on in different areas of the lake, or is aimlessly covering water and moving all day without any real defined purpose. A commitment to one general area, particularly on a large body of water is typically the best approach. The main factor I look for when choosing an area to pick apart is diversity – I want to find a small area of the fishery that offers as many options as possible. I want good shallow water habitat, mid depth options, deep water, and current if that applies to the body of water that I’m on, all within a one mile area. This allows you to establish what the fish are doing in a general sense. At this stage it isn’t about fine tuning, it is about narrowing down some options. An important point is that this won’t change by season. No matter the time of year, I will at least check everything.

These areas can be found before you even hit the water. Navionics combined with Google Earth will always be enough to point you in the right direction. Once you’re on the water it is time to really get into squeezing the most out of the spot. Let’s say that we found a one mile area that has two secondary points, Shallow brush with a few laydowns, a long line of emergent shoreline vegetation, a bridge with rip rap banks on either side, Several floating docks, and a deep water hump or high spot. So starting off there are six different options that could produce a bite. In no particular order I will start a rotation of these areas with a lure that makes sense for each cover type and the water / weather conditions. Now after this rotation let’s say I caught two small fish from the shoreline vegetation, but didn’t get a bite on anything else. Not a great start, but it isn’t time to pull the plug and relocate just yet. It’s time to consider how things will change during the day. Later in the afternoon the wind could pick up and start pushing a bit of current through the bridge, a group could move up to feed around the columns and the rip rap, or the sun could get high enough to position a few fish around the docks. One pass through an area isn’t enough to tell you all you need to know about it.

Always be adjusting to the conditions at the moment and look to capitalize on opportunities as they present themselves. Bite windows open and close throughout the day. One of those perfect looking laydowns that didn’t produce a tap at 8:00am could be holding a 5 pounder at 11:00am. Bass use key pieces of cover to feed when they are ready; the exact time is not a given.

Knowing that dead space, or down time will happen throughout the day also helps. Big limits often come in small amounts of time and your catches won’t be evenly spread out. It is easy to get discouraged during these, but knowing that it can switch on just as quick as it switched off can really be helpful. During these dead times it isn’t impossible to get a bite, but being in a kayak if you burn the time it takes to relocate and try to figure out what is going on you‘ll often take yourself out of a position to capitalize when things setup right for your area and your techniques.

Establish a rotation of all these spots and don’t get to locked into one thing that worked for an hour or so and think it will be the only thing going for the day. The beauty of kayak fishing is it removes that urge to pick up and leave an area as soon as something you thought would work doesn’t.

Looking back at some of the best events I’ve had, and the best days of fun fishing, the most common, common denominator, is commitment to an area and an open minded approach to dissecting the area I’ve committed too. Stay focused, stay positive, fish wherever you are with the mindset that it is the best area of the fishery to be in, and enjoy every moment on the water participating in this sport.

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