Your First Best Option

Look at a hydrographic lake map. Note potential areas at spawning time, for postspawn dispersal, for summer feeding, or for fall and winter refuge. Then look for potential structures that fit the bill. Move out to likely areas and run their deep edges at a slow speed, weaving up onto the structure, and then out over the adjacent deep water, watching your electronics. Note the depth and sharpness of the drop-off, the depth and contour of the weededge, the location of prominent points and corners and unusual features that might concentrate fish. Note subtle changes in bottom content on your electronics, which other anglers might miss. And most of all, watch for life: big hooks indicating large fish, clouds indicating baitfish, and their depth and orientation to the structure.

You haven't even put a line in the water yet. But you're tuned into fish location and behavior. A good start. Now you need to apply logical fishing techniques that match potential areas: livebait rigs along sharp drop-offs in lakes; spinner-crawler-bottom bouncers along reservoir flats; jigs vertically presented in rivers.

"A month prior to the 2003 PWT Championship," says 2003 PWT Angler of the Year Bill Ortiz, "I spent four days just riding around the Keweenaw Waterway system, watching my electronics. I never fished. I knew that if I tuned in to a specific fishing pattern that long before the tournament, the fish likely would change their behavior by the time the event began, and I'd be fishing memories. Instead, I familiarized myself with every inch of the system, noting areas and depths and types of structures where I saw baitfish and walleyes.

"I wanted to be oriented and prepared when the practice period began, with a good background to build upon. Then I could fish kinds of spots, determine which types were producing fish, and immediately go to similar areas I'd previously located, without wasting time. It takes a lot of discipline to 'not fish' under these circumstances, but in my case, I had my eye on the future. The average angler, however, would simply start tuning in to productive spots for that particular time period, and after investing a few minutes or hours looking and familiarizing, would start dropping lines, lures, and baits in the water."

Look before you leap? Not a bad strategy, especially since you can look a lot faster than you can fish, especially in deep water, and quickly detect fish on your electronics, and distinct changes in prominent structures that focus their location. When they're glued to the obvious edges of points, humps, the bases of drop-offs, or other obvious irregularities on prominent structures, well, things are definitely shaping up.

Structure. It's not a begin all and end all. But it's still the first step on the road to fishing success.