Bass fishing tips | Catching bass in prime northern pike habitat

Bass fishing tips, tricks and techniques

Bass fishing tips aren't something I have a lot of. As I said before I hardly ever fished for bass. I grew up in Minnesota and if it wasn't walleyes, northerns or panfish it's as if it didn't exist. What I had never caught was a Musky.

I had some friends who had a 32 foot trailer on their lot on Blackwater Lake in northern Minnesota and my buddy and I went up there a few times with the express idea of catching muskies.

It's a good sized lake with a lot of different habitat and you could catch bass, northerns, walleyes and muskies. Crappies and bluegills were also abundant but the water was so clear it made fishing a bit tough.

We tried for muskies a couple of days and never had a hit let alone a follow so to soothe our disappointment we would fish crappies and bluegills just so we could catch something.

One morning we decided we would fish for northerns as we'd found what we considered to be a prime spot. Small rocky point that dropped off into deep water really fast. The weed line was about 15 feet and we knew just what we wanted to do. We could beach the front of the boat and make a 10 foot cast from the back of the boat and be in 30 feet of water.

We expected to catch northerns and we expected to catch a lot of them. Lots of people would cruise by us as we were on the route from 3 resorts to the main part of the lake and most of those people were fishing for bass and the lake had a lot of what's consider prime bass habitat.

So we pulled in, baited up with big suckers and put our baits right in front of the weedline and waited. We didn't have to wait long until we caught our first northern. Maybe 10 minutes. We knew we were going to have a good day right where we were.

The northerns ere biting, we were in the right spot, it was a very nice day with little wind and we were comfortable. We were rigged specifically for northerns in our usual ways. Gold eagle claw short shank curved hook, gold, silver or red and white colorado spinner about the size of a nickel or slightly smaller, 12 inch wire leader, 10# trilene xl and around a six inch sucker for bait with a drop of Dr. Juice northern on it and a slip bobber.

We had a ton of fun and caught a lot of fish but the funny thing is we never caught another northern for the rest of the day. What we caught were bass. It was so easy to catch them I wondered what the big deal was about bass fishing and why the people passing us were coming back empty handed. Bad fishermen we figured.

I've never read a bass book in my life, I've never read a bass article in my life. The only thing I knew about bass fishing, at all, was from watching fishing shows on TV. Roland Martin and those guys. As far as I can remember I'd never even caught a bass until that day.

They were a lot of fun to catch and they fought a lot harder than I expected. We caught so many it was actually getting boring after about 4 hours. We did keep fishing tho. People would stop their boats and talk to us and we gave a ton of fish away that day to the bass fisherman that were coming back from the bass habitat without one fish.

Evidently we were in the right place at the right time even tho we were supposedly doing everything wrong to be catching bass. People were amazed when we would give them fish because we weren't catching little 1 pound bass but fish that averaged 3-4 pounds apiece.

The lakeshore in front of the trailer was full of lily pads so I went into town and bought a few floating bass lures to give that a try. It only took me three casts to catch a fish and it was just like on TV. The water just exploded around the lure and I had a fish on. That was really fun. Catching fish with top water lures was so cool I couldn't believe it. I spent about an hour a day fishing top water lures in our lily pads after that.

I still don't fish for bass but in Lake Thompson I would catch one now and then while fishing off the end of my dock. Smallmouth at that. They are a lot of fun to catch just like bigmouth bass are but again, strictly accidental.

We did go back to the spot on Blackwater lake at least once per trip and we never failed to catch bass on that spot. The lesson I learned there was fish aren't always where you expect them to be or caught on what you expect them to be. We expected northerns but caught bass and we could repeat the process everytime we went there.

Don't believe people who tell you that you can only catch a certain kind of fish on a certain kind of structure or habitat. I don't like crowds so you'll generally find me off by myself catching fish that no one believes are there and with methods no one believes work.

Don't be afraid to try different things and different baits. People laugh at me now and then for some of the things I do but I'm the one who usually catches fish when others aren't.

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Bass fishing tips, tricks and techniques

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