PART 2 - Bass Talk, Are You Listening? by Frank Lapin

Keeping what has been said in mind, all of your senses need to be wide open and receptive, because the fish will tell you where they are and what they. They talk to us in many different ways; it’s up to us to be listening. You may see them, but not catch them. You may see other triggers that tell you whether or not there are fish in a given area, but not realize it. Have you ever come into a swampy area and seen lots of frogs on the bank, but none in the shallow water or in pads at that spot. Come back in a couple of hours and they are all back in the pool. They had told you that predators were present in the shallows and it was safer for them on shore. They don’t really want to be out of the water but in the life and death game that they play every day shore was safer than the water at that time. The environment had just spoken to you, did you hear it?

I have had a day in a stump filled cove where we only caught fish off of stumps that had turtles or snakes on them. I’m not talking about little biscuit sized turtles or young of the year snakes, but plate sized turtles and snakes that were two feet long or better. I have never come up with the reason why but the third hit in the cove told me that whatever made these particular stumps attractive to creatures above the water was also making them attractive to creatures under the water. I listened... read more