Tonight I'm going to an urban river that feeds the Raritan bay. I expect it to be muddy or dirty. Bass have been in there for a while. Their associating w/ the drop-offs and bridge structures. My friend has been catching, but feels he should be doing better based on the amount of fish he's marking on the sonar. So the challenge is to figure out a presentation that these dirty water bass would like. Doing a little research on what the fresh water bass guys do I came up w/ a couple of things to try. Increase lure noise, crank baits w/ rattles and spinner baits. Add sent, squirt on some pogy sent. Try some different colors, the obvious, solid colors yellow, red, chartreuse. Translucent and natural colors might not be as visible to the fish. The fish will not move as far from their holding position so getting right in their zone will be important. They say the bass will move into shallower water. I've seen this on another urban river, it was muddy as well. In the deep water(25'+) I wouldn't mark anything but on the drop offs right into the shallow would be stacked w/ fish. The feeder creek mouths would be stacked as well.
I know this isn't really finesse fishing but it is relating fresh to salt water techniques.
Through the winter I fished a warm water outflow that had clear water and a tremendous amount of small bass. The best thing about it was it provided a great opportunity to try lots of techniques on a consistent body of fish. I was enamored w/ drop shoting and tried it over and over, but these fish didn't like it. We found that although they associated w/ the bottom they'd rise 10 to 12 feet to hit a surface swimmer (crystal minnow) but crank a plug to the bottom and they'd ignore it. That was contrary to my expectations. Then the light went off, I remember your trolling post on how bass would rise up to 15 feet for the bait and you'd set them around 10 above the fish. Now I know it's true in clear water, how about muddy? But the real ticket was swinging and tickling a small 3" paddle tail on 1/4 oz jig heads. Had to go up to 1/4 to stay in good contact because the flow was pretty strong. The spot also gave us an opportunity to refine our sonar reading. We learned how to pick out bait, single fish big and small, structure etc. We'd mark a fish, flip a cast upstream and swing it to the mark and hook up. It was all about learning. Now we're trying to apply the many lesons learned to other spots as well.
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