Migration route

[CHAMP]

Kim Stricker talking Buck Perry starting at about 13.45 min..

[Mapper]

Kim Stricker talking Buck Perry starting at about 13.45 min..

Great piece of footage showing a bass crossing a ‘flat’ by relating to its breaks. Visuals such as this short segment can go a long way in clearing up the confusion some might have about the term,“flat” It should also impress upon the mind just how important “breaks” are, whether it be a “flat” or a drop off.

What separates the Spoonplugger from the average fisherman? He understands the importance of “breaks”

[MuskyAddict]

Thanks for sharing. Watching that bass follow the breaks was super cool. It also reinforced for this newbie that it doesn’t have to be a huge rock, bush or tree - just a difference in the bottom as those small rocks proved.

Ken

[Mapper]

Thanks for sharing. Watching that bass follow the breaks was super cool. It also reinforced for this newbie that it doesn’t have to be a huge rock, bush or tree - just a difference in the bottom as those small rocks proved.

Ken

Ken,
As a Spoonplugger gaines experience and knowledge, he begins to become more cognizant of the importance of subtle structures and related breaks. Often times for me, these features were found by trolling the shallow lures as a discipline when my fishing got tough. It was not uncommon for me to find subtle but productive areas on a natural lake that I’d initially overlook for lack of obvious definition and distance from deep water. The key component? B-R-E-A-K-S!

[John Bales]

Talk about over looked. As spoonpluggers, we fish for the larger fish of any species. We spend a lot of time on the natural lakes at the base of the weedline waiting for the fish to get active. Like Walk stated, we spend less time in the shallows. Many times the inside edge is shaped just like the outside but not always. I had one such spot in my own lake which I have fished 1000 times. When casting the shallows, I would constantly end up shallower than I wanted to and after doing the same thing over and over, I decided to use the mapping on my Garmin unit. This was my first time using it. I made about 4 straight line passes, trying to over lap so nothing would be missed and low and behold, there was a shallow bar that stuck out much farther than I would expect and pretty narrow. This has always been a hot spot when the fish are shallow. Let me explain this. When casting and using the trolling motor, the slow control does not allow for the interpretation you can get on the troll at faster speeds. Especially when it is within a heavy weedline. More mapping found another spot similar within an inside turn which you would never expect a nice finger to occur here and it too became a hot spot when the fish moved. Both would be considered breaks. I really thought I knew my lake but there is always more to learn. John

[Harold Standish]

Kim Stricker talking Buck Perry starting at about 13.45 min..

Very nice Champ.. thanks for sharing
Hal

[jwt]

Here's a link to Bigmouth Forever, the sequel to Glen Lau's Bigmouth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybopUwSuiS8

[MuskyAddict]

That was a fun video. Thanks for sharing. For us Northerners sitting here twitching our thumbs while the ice is holding us back, that was especially inspiring to watch. I sit here thinking about what I learned last season… and more importantly what I didn’t learn and I ache to be back on the water. Come on sun…do your job. Melt this freakin ice.

Ken

[John Bales]

I am in the same frame of mind. The ice cannot go away fast enough. We all go through a stage of learning. New or long time at this, we continue to learn and think on how we can learn more and get better. Lakes change, fish populations change for different reasons. My time in doing this, one thing I realized this past season is we are fishing for less fish, period. Fishing pressure, weed spraying which makes the fish have to adapt to the changing conditions (not normal), lakes that have septic systems now which took away some of the fertility and color, Zebra muscles that have made some of our lakes drinking water and not fishing water ect. It is obvious that the schools of big bass and northerns are smaller in numbers. One of the eye opening things that have come with the looking around with the livescope tool. The lake that I live on, in the 70's, many times when an adult bass was hooked, the rest of the school would follow the hooked fish and try and take the lure away from that hooked fish. Back then it could be ten or more fish would come right to the boat. Last year, a number of times I would catch 7-11 bass from 3 to 4 lbs from a school and two years ago was the first time I noticed a single fish or two following a hooked fish to the boat. That let me know that things are getting better on the home lake and the catches made me feel good about it. Instead of a school of big bass maybe having 20 or more fish in it, it seems like there are not as many adults in a school. At least around here. There are places that are still special across the country but around here, it is obvious those days are over. It is what it is. Everywhere I went, I was amazed that the schools I did see were 3 to 5 fish in a group, not 20 or more. I keep bringing up the livescope and I know that makes a few spoonpluggers unhappy. This is my way of taking the learning to another level of understanding the when, where, what, why and how of the total picture of what Mr. Perry taught us. For at least 7 months of my season, I am casting for the bass on known spots that have all been found by trolling. Without that part of the learning, I wouldn't know where to look.
Every conversation I have with Terry O'malley is about the good old days when he was working for Mr. Perry. They would rarely put the boat in if they did not have water color. In every single instance, the bodies of water they fished had water color. I tried to explain to him that the lakes he fished around me were no longer spoonplugging lakes. Every one of them are now drinking water, no longer easy to present lures to the large schools of bass and pike that had not been disturbed for years and years until the spoonplugger came along and found that they were simply loaded with fish. Around here, that is gone. We catch what we have left. Thank God for Mr. Perry. John