How To Find Fish Fast/ New Bodies of Water, By: Mike Iaconelli – I want to talk about something that is really important, which is finding fish on new bodies of water and finding fish fast! Do you fish new bodies of water each year and try something new? I do, but this tip is also for anglers that fish the same places every year. It does not matter what the body of water is. This tip for locating and catching more bass will work on a stream, farm pond, lake, you name it! What do you want to do as soon as you get there? You want to catch them, right?
Anglers naturally want to go straight to the body of water and catch fish right away! Your boss may give you two hours to go fishing or you may even need to sneak out during your lunch break. It is the same situation for me when I have a tournament. We all have the same thing in common, which is how the heck do you find fish on new places and catch them fast?
I came up with a system and I am going to share it with you. It is a system that I have used since I was a little kid and I have developed it over the years to help me find fish quickly. I use it all of the time in tournaments and for fun fishing. I want to stress that this tip is for anybody, whether you are fishing from the bank, aluminum boat or a bass boat, you can use this system to catch more and bigger fish!
The first step happens before you get to the water. There are many things that you can do before you get there to help you eliminate unproductive areas and narrow down the window of opportunity. You want to get rid of the luck factor; you don’t want to leave it to luck when you go fishing. The goal is to narrow down a pond to one acre instead of 10 acres or narrow down the Louisiana Delta, for example, from 500,000 acres to 500 acres or even 100 acres. The three things that you can research and analyze at home before you even go fishing are historical research, map study, and seasonal patterns.
To begin with historical research, go online to google.com and look up the body of water. You can go to the library or use the internet to research archive issues of magazines that talk about the body of water. There are many things that you can do to prepare for a fishing trip. You can call the state and federal government agencies such as U.S. Corps of Engineers and the Division of Fish and Game. You can also call local biologists, tackle stores, and marinas. Start compiling some general information and then you need to start taking notes in a notebook. I keep a notebook for every place that I fish at and I write down the ‘buzzwords’. Buzzwords are the pieces of information that keep coming up among multiple sources. You are looking for the words that keep on popping up during this historical research.
When I speak with local sources such as biologists, tackle shop owners, and marinas, I don’t ask for GPS coordinates for specific areas to fish. I ask general questions such as:
-What is the water color?
-What is the tide level going to do?
-What do the fish generally do this time of year?
-What are the best colors?
When the information obtained from the local sources is compared with the rest of the historical research, buzzwords are revealed. The process of doing research gets an angler thinking about the new body of water long before a cast is ever made. When its time to get started fishing, an angler will have a plan of attack and the luck factor is greatly diminished.
To Be Continued,
Ike