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The Top Fish Hiding Places

Fish hiding places are all around us. To the untrained eye they are invisible. But to the trained eye of someone who is using the Flying Lure, the sky is the limit. When you use this lure, you’ll be able to find them and put your lure right where they live.

There are virgin waters in the midst of busy lakes that receive no fishing pressure, because people don’t know about them. Even if they did, they wouldn’t have the tools or the knowledge to fish them. Now I’m going to show you how.

Docks

Docks are among the most obvious and seldom-fished areas in a lake or ocean. This is despite the fact that many fishermen stand on top of docks and cast away from them. They should stop and fish a Flying Lure backward, right under their feet!

Famed smalimouth bass angler and TV host Tony Bean tells me of a number of people who have houseboats at his marina on Percy Priest Lake, in Nashville, Tennessee. These folks have begun mopping up on fish by never leaving their houseboats and simply letting the Flying Lure swim itself under the boat dock. They just pull back on the line and let it keep swimming under the dock, over and over, until a fish strikes. In the huge network of docks and piers in that marina, there are hundreds of places that hold fish at certain times. So, save your gas—catch fish at home!

Fish hide under docks because they provide some of the best shade and cover available. Wooden planks stop 100 percent of the light pene­tration from entering the water, and pilings and pontoons provide hiding places. Even if a dock is busy with people and boats, such as a marina, fish will become used to the activity and hide there anyway.

Some people like to “skip” a lure under a dock by whipping the rod tip horizontally, close to the water, and then releasing the lure. The result is a low-trajectory cast that lets the lure skip across the surface of the water—like a flat rock might. Before I invented the Flying Lure, I used this technique all the time in fishing tournaments. It was, and still is, a great way to place any lure under a dock, provided conditions are right. However, many docks are obstructed by cables and ropes, which, if you skip over, will foul your retrieve and make it impossible to land a fish. Many docks simply don’t have any clearance between them and the water. There isn’t any space to skip a lure through. This is exactly why the Flying Lure is perfect for this type of cover—you can still get your lure in there without skipping.

If you want to skip, however, the Flying Lure is the best skipping lure ever made. Why? Because it is flat, perfectly balanced, and most of the weight is at the opposite end of the lure from the line. Because of this balance, the lure doesn’t twirl in the air, has lots of surface area, and bounces along the water perfectly—two or three times the distance of an average lure. When the lure finally runs out of steam on the surface and sinks, it continues to move away from the angler, providing the ultimate lure for fishing docks.

Skipping is usually done with a spinning reel, which has a fixed spool, and is almost impossible to do with a bait-casting reel. The revolving spool of a bait-casting reel fouls easily and turns the reel into a bird’s nest of fishing line. The Flying Lure allows people with bait­casting equipment to penetrate the best areas without skipping.

If you go out and practice fishing docks with the Flying Lure, you will be able to place your lure where others simply cannot. By doing this, you will be fishing in virgin water, right under everybody’s nose, and no one will even know it! You will present your lure to big fish that may not have seen a lure that day or in weeks! By doing this, you’ll have a much better chance at catching a fish than someone who is fishing “used” water that has been pounded to a froth. The Flying Lure will give you an unfair advantage. Use it!

During a bass fishing tournament on the Merrimack River, which flows through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, I was fishing a large floating dock to which seaplanes were tied. From upstream of the dock, I let a four-inch Flying Lure swim right under the dock. By using the current and pulling and letting go line, I worked the lure twenty feet under the dock. The dock was approximately forty feet wide. Right under the center of the dock, I felt a bump. I set the hook and reeled in a large one-and-a-half- to two-pound crappie—a great fish for that area of the country. I released it and worked my lure under the dock again. Another bump.. . and another crappie of about the same size. This went on for a few more casts, until I got tired of it and had to move on. This was, after all, a bass tournament, and crappie didn’t count. What was the lesson here? There was a school of crappie that were unmolested right under the center of that dock! You could have probably caught ten big fish in a row. Why then were people fishing off of that dock, casting into the middle of the river? Who knows? But you should fish the best cover available in an area, even if it happens to be right under your nose. Don’t follow the fishless masses.

Although the Flying Lure is perhaps the greatest dock-fishing lure ever designed, please don’t use it just for docks. If you do, you’ll be missing lots of fish and lots of fun. In many other situations the Flying Lure gives you advantages that no other method does.

Natural Wood Cover: Brush, Trees

Natural wood, such as brush in lakes or flooded trees in reservoirs, is probably my favorite type of cover. It is abundant and holds some of the best fishing in a lake. In fact, the Flying Lure was invented to penetrate just such cover.

A great deal of the letters we get about the Flying Lure involve fishing trees that have fallen in the water. Conventional plastic worms, jigs, and so forth simply cannot do this type of cover justice.

Trae Garrett, a fisherman from Henderson, North Carolina, wrote to me of his success with the lure in a sunken tree:

What happened to Trae was that the bass was sitting right under that tree because of the prevailing winter conditions. Had Trae pulled a spinnerbait by the tree, he would have probably not caught the fish because cold-water fish tend to be sluggish. He had to put the lure right under the tree—and he did with astounding results.

Often the difference between success and failure in fishing sunken trees can be a few inches—the few inches that a Flying Lure can cover and sail under, right into a lunker’s face.

Whitehall Reservoir in Upton, Massachusetts, is notorious among local anglers for having very big bass, some of which are often impossi­ble to catch. These Whitehall lunkers have a formidable fortress to penetrate: floating islands made up of brush and root systems. When the bass are active, they come out from under these matted islands and take conventional lures. When they aren’t active, you probably couldn’t even get them out with dynamite! They’re yards under the brush islands. You can’t flip a lure to them or make them come out. At one point, I was so frustrated with these bass, I broke my rod by hitting the side of the boat. Instead of using dynamite, I decided to invent a lure that would go in after the bass, Rambo-style—the Flying Lure.

Crashing The Brush

Heavy overhanging brush that extends from the shoreline has been the place where I have had the most success. Trees and bushes that grow out over the water form an edge that appears to be the shoreline to many fishermen. Fishermen will cast to within feet or inches of this false shoreline and move on. The real treasure, however, lies feet and yards inside the edge. Fish live and hide underneath these brush canopies, untouched by most anglers—even experienced ones. Often water ex­tends below the limbs and behind them. The real shoreline may be two feet or twenty or more feet beyond where the limbs end.

Crashing the brush is a technique that I invented out of desperation. It is guerilla warfare when it comes to catching fish. No sane human would try it. People scratch their heads in disbelief when they first see it. Using a heavy-action spinning rod and twelve- to seventeen-pound test line, you look for openings in the limbs, not near the surface of the water, but above it. Let’s say you see an opening of one foot in diameter in the brush that is facing you, but it’s six feet above the water level. What do you do? You cast your lure into the opening, of course. Most fishermen would never do this because they fear losing their lure. Even if you catch a fish, you would never get it out of there—right? Well, actually you are right. . . but the trick is to go in after that fish and not to pull it out.

Here’s how one experience in crashing worked. It was nearly dusk (my favorite time of the day). All of the other fishing boats on the lake had already gone back to the launch ramp. One stretch of brush in this particular lake is awesome. It has major trees stretching thirty feet over the water. As usual, I was casting a four-inch Flying Lure into openings above the water and letting it sink into the water below to swim even farther on its own. This lure had a stiff fiber weed guard, although you can use a soft plastic weed guard for fishing the brush as well. The legs on a Flying Lure act as a natural weed guard and flip the hook away from branches most of the time.

I made a cast over a large clump of limbs six to seven feet above the water and let the lure descend, then plop into the water. At once, I heard a splash behind the brush and felt a bump on the line. It is important to listen to what is happening in such a situation. Often your sense of feel through the fishing line is diminished since it is hanging over limbs and can’t transmit a fish’s taps or motion as well as an unobstructed line can. I gave the lure some slack line for one to two seconds, to make sure that the fish really had a good hold of it. Then, reeling in as much slack line as possible, I set the hook. The water behind the limbs exploded with a tremendous splashing and churning. My line strained. The branches over which I had cast were bending under the weight of a huge fighting fish. The fish swam right, then left. I just tried to hold it, giving it some slack so my line wouldn’t pop. After several minutes of this, I was able to get the fish’s head out of the water, just beyond the gills. Now came the task of actually going in to get it. I put the electric trolling motor on high speed and pointed it toward the clump of limbs where I was holding my quarry. The trick in going in to get the fish is to keep its head out of the water while moving the boat in toward shore. This is an interesting balancing act—coordinating the speed of the boat with line intake so the line doesn’t break or allow the fish’s nose to slip back below the surface. If its head slips back in the water, it has a chance to break free again. This maneuver takes some practice.The fish was actu­ally six to eight feet past the edge of the brush line. The bow of the boat crashed through the trees. I had to dodge the limbs and control the boat and the rod at the same time. All of this commotion made the fish start to act up again, but I was able to keep its head above the water. Leaning down through the brush, I made a grab for the fish’s lower jaw and succeeded on the first try. A heavy eight-pound six-ounce bass grudgingly came out of the water. There was no way that the fish was coming out of there the same way the lure went in. I cut my line and released my rod, which was flow firmly entangled in the trees. Was it easy to catch that fish? No! Was it better than not catching a fish at all? Yes, a thousand times over. I have relived that story many times and will remember it all my life.

What is the lesson here? Simply do what no others do. Go the extra mile. Find the very best places in the brush and figure out a way to fish them. The best fish hide in the best, densest brush and overhangs, not in easy-to-get-to twigs. And. . . don’t be afraid to lose lures! I’m not just saying this because I make lures . . . honest! I am constantly amazed how people will spend $20,000 on a boat, $1,000 on rods and reels, $100 on oil and gas to go fishing for the weekend, and then be fright­ened about losing a $1 lure. Plan to lose lures. I would routinely lose $20 to $50 per day or more in lures just to place them in the best areas where others wouldn’t dare. This often makes the difference between great fishing and so-so fishing. Don’t skimp where it counts.

Weeds

In many lakes, especially natural lakes, weeds are the key to locating and catching fish. Weeds such as lily pads are obvious places to fish a Flying Lure since they provide cover on the surface. You can fish the lure over the tops of the weeds with an exposed hook because the lure’s design makes it always ride upright on the surface of the water. When you reach the edge of the pads, or an opening, you can let the lure drop inside the opening and actually swim under the weeds it just swam over! In top-water situations such as lily pads, you get a lot of missed strikes. You can release the Flying Lure to go back after those missed strikes without recasting by simply giving the lure some slack line. This is a real time-saver during those critical seconds when a fish is near your lure and interested in it—ready to hit it again because it’s mad that it just missed it!

The first time he used it on his home lake, Gary Lubarsky used the Flying Lure to swim under some weeds near deep water. The result? The biggest bass of his life! Now his wife also fishes with Gary!

Matted weed beds are great hiding places for bass in most lakes and reservoirs. Matted weeds are heavy clumps of weeds that grow toward the surface of the water and often lay on the surface, forming a canopy. Fish hide under these shady canopies. Guido Hibdon, Dion Hibdon, and I were fishing a bay in a large canal in the late summer. Clumps of matted weeds were growing in four to six feet of water, interspersed with lily pads. In one of those rare days when you can say you got the lead in a ball game with Babe Ruth, I caught four fish before Guido and Dion had their first one. While Guido took it with good humor, he was not happy! He wanted to see what I was doing.

I was casting beyond the clumps of weeds, which were two to six feet in diameter, and bringing the lure over the weeds like a spoon. The open hook was riding over the weeds unobstructed because it had already aligned itself in an upright position when I began to retrieve it in open water, before it reached the weeds. After I pulled the lure over the clump of weeds, I let it go right into and under it. Fish that were interested in the lure when it got their attention on the surface were hitting it when it was released into their domain. It didn’t take Guido and Dion long to catch on. Soon they were neck and neck with me. Bass fisherman Pat Roy, who was my fishing partner, ended up catching the lunker of the day.

Bass love weeds. They live in them and make them their home among them. Find weeds that are in fertile food shelves, such as the one we were fishing, or weed beds near deep water. The Flying Lure is especially weedless (it can shield its hook from catching on underwater weeds and other obstructions) because of the way it is designed. The legs act as a natural weed guard during the retrieve. Also, it does not sink into a weedy bottom and become tangled, like a jig. Because of its wide footprint, it rests on a weedy bottom like a snowshoe, ready to be retrieved without picking up muck along the way.

The Flying Lure is also great for fishing deep weed lines because of its slow fall and weedless ability. I routinely fish the lure in ten to twenty feet of water, swimming it into weed beds and around weed lines. I fish the Flying Lure right under the boat on one of my favorite lakes, on top of a seventeen-foot-deep point. This point has a great weed bed right on its edge that holds an excellent population of bass in the summertime. By the way, this point is just 200 feet straight out from the launch ramp. While boats are whizzing by, I’m catching fish by letting the lures swim along the weed bed, seventeen feet straight down. The water-skiers and other fishermen must think, “What a dummy! Why doesn’t he go find some fish?” as they speed by. I say again, “Why waste gas?” You’ll learn more about finding these deep-water areas when I discuss the Flying Lure fishing system later in the book.

Finding and Fishing the Best Bottom Obstructions

Bottom obstructions are features of the lake, river, or ocean bottom that provide housing to fish. I call fish that hide here cave dwellers. “Caves” where fish hide include riprap (crevices between rocks used to build bridge abutments and highway supports), culverts or pipes that run into a body of water, crevices in a rock jetty, bluffs with ledges, or undercut banks in rivers and streams.

Amaze Your Friends with the Culvert Trick

One example of cave-dwelling fish that I often catch live in a culvert on a small lake near my home. This lake is a joggers’ paradise. Urban-dwelling yuppies and pesky dog owners can be seen running around its banks day and night. Lots of urban fishermen give this lake fishing pressure with live bait and lures of all kinds. There’s nothing that these fish haven’t seen.

A small culvert feeds this lake with water from another lake. This culvert is in a highly trafficked area. People are constantly fishing around it. A trick I often perform when I get bored on a Sunday afternoon is to drive up to the lake in my car and park a few feet away from the culvert. Then I ceremoniously take out my single fishing rod with one lure tied on . . . usually a four-inch Flying Lure. I carry no tackle box. I walk to the culvert and lean over it. To either side of it, there are granite lips that have a one- to two-foot overhang. Fish love this place! The moving current sweeps minnows and other food past here and the bass are protected from the sun and other predators. I make my first “cast”—an underhand lob to the edge of the rock cul­vert—and work the lure inside of it. I feel a bump and set the hook. Out comes a two- to three-pound bass, which I unhook and release. I make my second cast, another bump, and this time a bigger bass comes leaping out of the water. By now I have their attention. All the other fishermen on the bank are watching me. I make my third cast, work the lure a little bit, and get a third hit. The hook is set and yet another fish breaks the surface of the water. Three casts.. . three fish. By now people are walking over to watch what’s happening. At that point I release the fish, put my lure away, smile, walk back to my car, and drive away. Some are left scratching their heads, asking “Who was that man?”

Find the Hidden Cave Dwellers

There are underwater caves made by humans and by nature that are unseen from the surface. But. . . if you know what you are looking for, you can find them and catch hidden fish.

Natural Caves

Undercut banks are formed in rivers and streams when water washes against an earth bank and erodes the earth a little bit at a time. After a while caves form underneath the bank, below the surface of the water. These caves are perfect hiding places for fish. As the water washes away these undercut banks, the roots of trees growing on top of them are exposed and form hiding places. They are like upside-down trees growing from the roof of the undercut bank that provide shelter and break up the water current. Fish of all kinds, and especially trout, are notorious for hiding in these places. I have actually seen people in Europe wading in streams without a fishing rod or net to catch these fish. They come right up to an undercut bank and reach their arms inside the tangle of roots under the bank. After a few moments of grappling and wrestling, the person brings out a live and kicking brook trout! If I hadn’t once seen this myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. I witnessed a man who caught six fish in a few minutes by going from root system to root system along the undercut banks of the stream using nothing but his bare hands. . . illegally, I might add. Even though this man had lost several fingers on one hand in an industrial accident, he was still able to catch the fish with incredible dexterity. Or maybe it wasn’t an industrial accident—maybe he tried it in Florida once and ended up with a ‘gator.

Fortunately, you can catch these same fish in the root systems of undercut banks easily and legally! Unlike other lures, the Flying Lure can penetrate these areas via horizontal underwater motion. This is exactly the action you need both to go under the bank and to swim through the roots to reach the fish. Using the two-inch Flying Lure in dark, natural colors is a deadly technique, especially in small trout streams. For bass and larger fish use the four-inch or six-inch models— and use the weed-guard option. Either use jigheads with the fiber weed guard attached, or at least engage the soft weed guard available on every Flying Lure. You use the soft weed guard by impaling the middle tail strand of the lure on the hook, past the barb, and impaling the other end of the strand on the lead clip on the top rear of the lure body. The weed guard will deflect the especially pesky roots in these underwater labyrinths.

Let your lure work itself under the bank and into the roots. Just give it line while it is sinking and swimming forward. Once the line stops moving, give it a slight pull and let it go forward again. Don’t do too much. Let the lure fish itself. Work it in one place. Tease the fish. Be ready for the slightest bump on your line. It’s probably a good fish. I have found that fish in undercut banks tend to be larger specimens, compared to fish in less ideal locations, because undercut banks are choice real estate. Food is swept by here all the time by the water current. It’s a fish buffet, and it’s free—with a nice atmosphere to boot! Bigger fish get the best hiding places. Also, these fish tend to be more aggressive than average because they are so well hidden from the light and current and feel secure.

Look for undercut banks wherever a river or stream takes a turn. The outside bank—the one against which the water is rushing—will usually be eroded if it is made of relatively soft earth. Even if the bank is made of hard rock, the banks that take the brunt of the water current’s force tend to be the better ones, since food is always being swept by. Even if there is no undercut in the bank, eddies (quiet places) are formed by rock outcroppings, crevices, or debris in the water. Fish will also hide in these quiet areas with a slow current and wait for their meal to come by.

Usually bluffs are rock cliffs made of shale or sandstone that is eroded over time. These cliffs have a multitude of crevices and overhangs where fish can hide.

Tony Faria, a friend of mine, uses the Flying Lure to fish the bluffs of an old flooded rock quarry. He fishes out of a small johnboat and simply pitches the lure against the rock walls with short casts. Says Tony:

In this short quotation, Tony has revealed the keys to fishing bluffs:

Keep the lure right next to the face of the wall, don’t let it swim away from the wall like conventional lures, and let it swim under the ledges. That’s it. Simple. This style of fishing has never been possible before! The Flying Lure greatly increased the success rate of many people who fish reservoirs in the South and West that are replete with bluffs and rock walls. While the Flying Lure is not magic, it is a better tool to fish this type of situation.

Fish generally will suspend somewhere along the face of a bluff or will hide under the rock outcroppings. Take a look at a natural rock wall when you’re driving down a road sometime. There are hundreds of irregularities, undercuts, and crevices. Now imagine that wall underwater. Fish will use the features of that wall to hide and find food.

Pipes, Barrels and Submerged Openings

Any area underwater that has shade and is segregated from the open water has the possibility of being a fish-holding area. Such areas provide the shelter that fish seek as well as a place from which to ambush prey. A great hidden variation on the culvert, or small bridge, is the submerged culvert. Watch for these whenever the water level is low. They can be nothing more than a small pipe that enters the water, or they can be a larger opening such as a runoff drain or a small bridge over a stream running into a lake. Once you spot them at low water, these places can be an undiscovered gold mine that only you know about.

Cast toward these areas and let your lure bounce down the vertical face of the wall, which is usually around the opening. The beauty of the Flying Lure in this case is that it will bump along the wall face until it reaches the hole. Then it will swim inside on its own power—because the lure is always trying to go forward. Keep giving the lure slack line as it tries to find the crevice. Once it does so, it will begin taking line a little bit faster than before. This happens because the lure is no longer scraping along the surface of the wall but traveling ahead unimpeded. Pay very close attention to your line once it begins coming off the spool more quickly. This means that the lure has entered the opening and is swimming more quickly. Usually fish will be right at the mouth of the opening. Once the lure swims through, the more aggressive fish usually hit. Keep working the lure in one place inside the opening, teasing the less aggressive fish if necessary.

Any pipe running into the water could hold a fish—either inside or beside it. You can often see pipes on shore running into the water. Find where they end in the water and you may have yourself a hot spot.

Barrels and tires are oddball types of cover that often hold fish overlooked by others. They are perfect cover for the Flying Lure fisher­man, who can penetrate them. Fishing tournaments in urban areas often have an abundance of such cover. A “tire bass” has put me in the money more than once!

The most unusual place in which I ever caught a bass in these man-made caves was a discarded washing machine. My tournament partner was mad at me for fishing such a stupid piece of cover and began to pull the boat away against my protests. After a few twitches with the Flying Lure, a two-and-a-half-pound bass came jumping out of the washing machine—hooked on my line! My partner was absolutely dumbfounded. I’m sure that nobody else in that tournament would lower themselves to fish that white enamel piece of cover either. That washing machine bass put us in the money! You might say it was a clean finish.

Riprap

Riprap is a term used to describe rock walls that descend into the water from the sides of a road or a bridge. Riprap is made of stones that generally have a flat surface and are two to five feet across. Between the rocks, there are crevices that hide food for game fish, such as crayfish and minnows. Bass tend to hover near certain areas of riprap where they feed on the creatures that hide in the crevices. If the riprap is in a reservoir or a river, the irregular stones create eddies in current. Let your lure bounce down the face of the riprap. Work it back and forth, like a crawfish scooting back into cover after being pulled out. Since the lure stays right next to the cover, it remains in the strike zone all the time, all the way down the bank.

Pay particular attention to places where there is any irregularity in the riprap, including any change in the size of the stones. Many times bass will be near the irregular stone, whether it is larger or smaller than the surrounding rock. Any weeds or fallen timber on top of the riprap can be fish magnets that you can “sail” your Flying Lure under. Wherever the riprap takes a turn is an area to check out. Inside turns—that is, turns where riprap forms a U—are often excellent. The bottom near a U often gets shallower and forms a food shelf, sometimes even with a solitary weed patch. If you find an area like this, surrounded by deep water, look out! It is a prime feeding area where game fish will feed on minnows hiding in the weeds or debris.

Another key area in the riprap is where it meets the deepest water or an open channel. Under a bridge, the areas on either side of it, where the riprap ends, are generally the very best. Outside of each side of the riprap, the rocks turn to form a point. Fish often camp out at each of the four possible points, because the water flows by there. These points form natural resting points when fish are traveling through riprap channels. They are also natural ambush points for big fish to wait for minnows to swim by.

Cast your lure near these edges and let the current sweep it past the riprap. If there is no current, simply cast to either side of the edge. If there is an obstruction near the edge, or even within yards of it, pay particular attention. A sunken tree or a patch of weeds close to edges of riprap can be productive staging areas because of their difference from the vast expanse of riprap that usually surrounds them.

Riprap is often overlooked, but it can pay big dividends if you know what you are looking for.

Jetties

Jetties are rock peninsulas that are usually found in salt water and in larger freshwater lakes, or freshwater seas. They are man-made and provide a barrier to protect beaches and harbors from the waves and tides. Jetties are also great places for fishing and recreation. The rocks that make up jetties are often large—three to six feet in diameter.

Jetties are a rich feeding ground for many species of fish. Baitfish hide between the rocks, drawing larger fish. Shellfish and other mollusks make their home among the rocks and are a rich food source.

Use Flying Lures to penetrate the vast areas between the rocks that hold fish of all kinds. Don’t just cast away from the jetty as far as you can, as most people do. Sometimes the best piece of cover in the whole area is the jetty itself.

Before I invented the Flying Lure, I used to fish with live bait straight down from jetties and saltwater piers, and catch as many fish as those who were casting as if their lives depended on how far they cast. Use the currents to swim the Flying Lure in and around the rocks. Don’t do too much. Let the lure work itself as it is bouncing along and among the rocks. Use it as you would live bait. Have confidence that the fish will eat it and hang onto it. Always watch your line. Catch those overlooked fish that have probably moved into the rocks to avoid the steady barrage of lures farther out.

Fishing for Spawning Bass

Some of the most incredible experiences I have ever had are those in the spring, fishing for spawning fish. At this time, warm-water species of fish, such as largemouth and smallmouth bass, panfish, and others, build circular nests in relatively shallow water in which to deposit their eggs and reproduce. Bass protect their nests and will generally attempt to attack or remove any foreign visitors (a.k.a. lures).

Recently I took a fishing trip to New Hampshire, to the lake on which the film On Golden Pond (with Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn) was made. The real “Golden Pond,” Squam Lake, is a classic New England retreat with fishing cabins, colorful local characters, and small-town New England charm. The lake is pristine, with super-clear water. On a calm day, you can see ten to twenty feet straight down! I went there with a New England bass fishing club called the Mass Masters to do some field-testing of the Flying Lure.

This was a perfect testing ground because you could see exactly what the lure was doing at all times. You could also see how the fish were reacting to the lure. It was almost like fishing in an aquarium.

I was fishing with my good friend Ray Lentine, a longtime outdoor radio talk show host heard in Massachusetts. Ray has been fishing this lake for decades and was my guide. We were spotting and fishing smallmouth beds in five to twelve feet of water. We would cast a Flying Lure toward the bed and let it sink beyond it. Then we would work the lure toward the bed by lifting the rod tip a few inches and letting the lure swim forward to the bottom again. This proved to be an absolutely deadly technique. Bass on or near beds need to be teased. They will not strike a lure that passes by them quickly during the spring. They will, however, try to kill anything that repeatedly invites itself onto their bed—as the Flying Lure does repeatedly by swimming back in their faces. Time after time, the fish did not hit the lure at once. They would hit it only after being teased three, four, five, or ten times!

This experience brought to mind the now-famous sequence from the Flying Lure infomercial where a smallmouth bass is enticed into taking the lure after seeing it go back in its face multiple times. This happens all the time with this lure . . . and not just in the spring. Neutral or nonfeeding fish need to be coaxed into striking. This is where the concept of persistence comes in. We’ll discuss persistence in Chapter 9. Most fish are not feeding most of the time. You need to be persistent and coax them into striking. Conventional lures are not made to be persistent. Once you retrieve conventional lures past a fish, they’re gone, never to be seen by that fish again. You’ve lost the opportunity to keep that lure working in the strike zone, close to cover.

Going back to our experiences on “Golden Pond,” if the fish swiped at and missed our lures, we would simply let them glide back toward the fish—and let the fish hit them again. I also firmly believe that changing a lure’s direction during the retrieve is a definite strike trigger. For years fishermen have observed that a fish strikes the lure just at the moment a crankbait or a spinnerbait changes direction. This is usually accomplished by changing the angle of the rod from side to side or bumping the lure against an obstruction, such as a rock or a log. I cannot prove it, but I think that the greater the angle of change in the retrieve, the greater the strike trigger it is. The greatest strike trigger possible, in my opinion, is a 180-degree turn in the lure’s direction. Through underwater tests and filming in many environments I have proved to my own satisfaction that making a lure go back into a fish’s face is the most strike-provoking action any lure can take. Doing this multiple times is as close to a sure-fire method as I have ever seen. It is almost unfair.

Club members noticed another key item about fishing the spawn. Of all the lures used over three days, the Flying Lure was the only one that many fish would actually swim off their beds to attack—the first time they saw it. They did not pay any attention to conventional jigs until the jig was right in the center of the nest. I believe that this was due to the completely natural swimming action of the Flying Lure—unimpeded by human error in the retrieve. Jigs and other lures either swam by the nest too quickly, never to return, or sank quickly, like a stone. This also explains why many people report that they consistently get more hits with the Flying Lure at all times of the year. It’s just as you see in the tank in the Flying Lure TV infomercial. Those fish went wild over the Flying Lure while only sporadically touching others. With these soft plastic lures, the fall is the most important part of the retrieve. Other lures are not engineered to take full advantage of it with a natural side-to-side motion and a slow programmed fall.

Catch and Release

Whenever possible, I support the catch and release of all species of fish. In my book, a valid exception to catch and release is whenever fish will be used immediately and responsibly for food—not hoarded for the sake of hoarding. There’s nothing wrong with keeping fish to eat. It’s right, it’s healthy, and it’s delicious! In fact, lakes benefit from an intelligent harvest of fish. Underfished ponds can become overpopulated with small, stunted fish. I have fished ponds like this, where you can catch hundreds of bass every day, all six to ten inches long. Due to a population explosion, food becomes scarce, leaving a lot of small fish to fight for a little food. Fish are a resource to be used responsibly, admired, and restored, not to be wasted or mythologized.

Here’s how the mechanics of catch and release really work. When using lures with a single hook, such as the Flying Lure, fish are usually hooked in the area of the mouth cartilage, a hard, resilient mass. There aren’t even blood capillaries here. Puncturing this area is much like clipping your fingernail.

I feel most strongly about catch and immediate release when you are fishing in the spring. During spawning time, fish reproduce and some, such as bass, protect their nests full of eggs. It is appropriate to remove a fish from its parental duties if you see it come off a nest. If you catch a fish during the spawn, release it as quickly as possible, as close to where you caught it as possible.

Some people may keep an occasional big fish in the spring. That’s okay. I don’t think that, with conventional fishing methods, humans can ever fish out a lake or river. But they will make the population of fish move to protect itself. Fish will simply move away from fishing pressure—either deeper or toward a portion of a lake that is not “pounded” by anglers.

Tournament anglers are sometimes challenged with respect to fishing for spawning fish. Guido Hibdon, a Bass Masters Classic winner, once asked a critic of fishing for spawners at a seminar, “Do you fish between February and June?” The vociferous critic replied, “Of course I do!” “Then,” said Guido, “you’re a hypocrite because you’re fishing for spawning fish and you don’t even know it!” Guido was right. Unless we completely stop fishing in the spring and early summer, we are, by definition, fishing for spawners. Simply stated, we must have balance in our fishing, not black-and-white rules. Use your informed judgment. Protect what you have, or one day it will be gone.

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