I’m fortunate to have open water through the winter months near my home in Idaho where I can launch my bass boat to stay sharp. If you don’t fish for a while, you lose your edge just as a competitor in any other sport would.
The most important thing I do on these off-season outings is work on my weaknesses. Right now, my biggest weakness is catching bass with forward-facing sonar. The younger anglers on the Elite Series tour are much better than I am with this technology.
I grew up fishing in California without graphs, GPS and digital charts. On some days, we’d run 70 miles up the twisting tidal waters of the California Delta through sloughs and other confusing backwaters.
We had to find our way back using only landmarks. If I went back to the Delta today, I’d be lost without GPS mapping.
I loved and still love casting to bank cover and relying on the water and weather conditions to tell me how to fish. When I started fishing offshore back then, I was ahead of the curve. Today, I’m lagging with forward-facing sonar.
I went out the other day and fished a reservoir with a friend. And, no joke, we caught 50 smallmouths from water that was in the mid to high 30s.
I knew from memory where I would find the bass in deep water. I caught some of them by fishing a jig and a drop shot on the bottom. I also targeted individual bass suspended out away from the structure with forward-facing sonar.
Some of the bass floating out there by themselves were bigger, weighing up to 4 pounds. The largest bass we caught on structure went about 2 1/2 pounds.
We caught the suspended fish with a variety of baits, including a tungsten ball head jig I just designed with Cipher Fishing. Because tungsten is much denser than lead, it returns stronger sonar signals that show up better on the display of my Garmin ECHOMAP™ Ultra 2.
The jig swims and hangs horizontally because the tungsten extends down the hook’s shank. I pair the jig with a 3-inch Yamamoto Scope Shad minnow. When you shake the rod, the Scope Shad rolls side to side with an extremely realistic action.
Even when I made casts as far as 110 feet, I could track my bait a lot better because of the tungsten jig. It was amazing to see how the bass reacted when I sped up, slowed down or imparted some other action to the bait. It taught me a lot about fish behavior.
I’m getting a lot more confident with forward-facing sonar, but I still have tons to learn. I’ve been in a boat with some of the guys who excel with this technology. It’s pretty mind boggling to see what they can do with it.
I never thought in a million years that fishing would become what it is today. It’s never going back to what it was. Even if forward-facing sonar is banned from tournament competition, the general fishing public will continue to use it.
When I go to Elite Series tournaments this year, I’ll try being focused and positive about relying on forward-facing sonar. It will be important for me to have success with it on practice days.
If that doesn’t happen, I’ll probably revert to my old self. There will always be bass near the bank for me to catch, but, other than during the spawn, they usually don’t run as big as those suspended fish.
