Yesterday Seth Feider told us he was video game fishing as he does on Mille Lacs back home in Minnesota. He’s also favoring that style of fishing on Cherokee Lake.
Feider isn’t alone. Many of the other anglers, leaders included, we interviewed yesterday at the weigh-in are doing the same thing. In all cases, they hope the fun continues. Game or not, side scan technology and high-resolution graphics and large screen displays make offshore fishing easier for everyone. Back in the day, that was not the case. Only a chosen few were good at finding bass in deep water.
In a tournament where finding, and following, migrating schools of baitfish is the ultimate key for the smallmouth anglers, those electronic underwater eyes are essential to success. Baitfish are heavily concentrated in the same depth range. Bait is everywhere. With so much of it available, the key is matching habitat up with the bass, and how they are positioning to feed on those baitfish.
You can’t do that without today’s high-tech electronics. Today the name of the game will be applying those electronics into a post-front situation. Another front is on the way, though. And like Ott DeFoe told me, “The second day after a front is the worst on Cherokee.” Today is that day, and the electronics will be heavily relied upon to help find the smallmouth, although not so much for the largemouth anglers.