Thinking Out Of The Box for Pressured Smallies

Your Negative Cues
One of the jobs that helped me pay for college was roofing. We wore heavy clothes on a surface three times hotter than the surrounding air, which was generally quite hot. Even with gloves, ripping up old roofing wore the skin from our hands. Engulfed in noxious fumes, we carted bubbling buckets of black tar to spread across the roof with mops. We drank extraordinary amounts of liquid to stave off heat prostration, similar to what soldiers in Iraq do on an average day.

When the smell of hot tar comes wafting down from a roofing project, I start feeling nauseous. Even today, 30 years later, I associate the smell of tar with sunstroke—which prompts me to wonder, when I hook and release a smallmouth, what are all the things it might associate with that experience?

When considering factors that lead to conditioning, thinking only about lure type, size, and color is a mistake. Just before being hooked, smallmouths often hear the gradual approach of an electric motor, the incessant clicking of a sonar unit, the shuffling of feet on a deck, and the sound of waves slapping a hull. Before the lure even hits the water (yet another sonic opportunity for negative association), fish have the opportunity to make any number of connections between you and a prior bad experience. Electricity from wiring grounded to the hull; your shadow; the shadow of the boat; the flash of a white shirt; the sound of an anchor crashing to the bottom—these are just some of the negative cues that can limit your chances before you make a single cast.

None of this may be at all true for small or untutored bass, but what about big fish in heavily pressured waters? Logic insists the gambler in that case is the angler who rushes up to a targeted area, rips the trolling motor into the water, and leaves the dashboard sonar running while he arcs a long cast, terminating in a big, noisy “kasploosh.” The problem gambler is the guy who crowds other boats on heavily fished waters, suggesting the only thing worse than the click from two transducers is the din from four.

Turning the Tables
Campbell responds to pressure by taking the road less traveled. “Now I look for spots that aren’t on the maps,” he says. “We’re fishing a lot of areas where, 17 years ago, I spent no time. Now we’re looking at spots from a different perspective, thinking outside the box. When I pass over a hump I can’t find on my best charts, I start salivating. Little turns, drop-offs, isolated ridges—anything that could be overlooked gets my attention these days.”

Smallmouths either get driven to these nondescript spots by pressure, or they were always there and we never knew because the habitat seemed bland and featureless. That’s the key. The blander, the better. Surrounded by hectares of flat, featureless sand or clay, smallmouths find food where they won’t be bothered by anglers. A small scattering of rocks in the middle of a huge sand flat can be all it takes to attract a dozen or more big smallmouths.

The same kind of logic rules lure selection for conditioned bass. “Smallmouths have seen tubes every day for years, and a few years back it was very hard to catch a smallmouth on a tube,” Campbell says. “Right now it’s Berkley Gulp! minnows and gobies that are on fire, because both the look and scent are still new to the fish.”

When smallmouths finally catch on to the new thing, experimentation starts over. It’s a natural process, and we constantly detail new lures and techniques designed to negate the effects of pressure in the pages of this magazine, such as learning to fish plastics “in space,” far from the boat. And, generally, the more pressure bass experience, the more important subtle colors become. Smoke and green pumpkin stock rises, overtaking fluorescent shades and metal flake. But the first rule for combating pressure is to make yourself small.

“All those boats are putting off fish, so I’m staying way off spots and casting to them,” Campbell says. “We catch more smallmouths by drifting with the wind, too. We’re letting a ton of line out, so the boat’s not shadowing the fish, and just letting baits tap or waft along behind us.

“Pressured bass can be line-shy,” he adds. “If you’re the only one there, you can use heavier line. When lots of people are around, you’d better start downsizing to lighter line, smaller swivels, smaller sinkers, and smaller baits. When you’re using 6-pound and other guys are using 8, the improvement in the bite becomes noticeable in pressure situations.”

Try an experiment the next time you spend any number of days on heavily pressured water in stable conditions: Fish a spot the way you normally do the first day. The second day, use lighter line and make longer casts. Wear camo, dull blue, or green hats and shirts. Once you determine distance and direction from your spot, line it up and turn off everything electronic on the boat. Let the wind take the boat in for the last 150 feet or so. Slowly lower the anchor and carefully place it on bottom. Stop the boat a long cast from the targeted area.

Sit down. Relax. Let the fish adjust to the sound of waves slapping the hull. Don’t stomp around. Reduce all boat noise to a whisper. Reduce all movement to a minimum. Keep the rod low when casting. Stop the lure less than a foot over the water. Don’t be like Ike when you hook one.

Underestimating the capacities of animals seems endemic to western thought, leading to sounds of awe and wonder from CNN reporters when scientists say animals can predict tsunamis, or that gorillas, crows, and various other animals can recognize themselves in a mirror, proving they have a sense of self (something science denied them for centuries).

You’ve run afoul of pressure, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Where bass are pressured, the game gets harder every year. To continue playing you have to be able to think outside the box that teachers, parents, peers, even scientists, and people you’ve never met wrapped you up in long ago. Don’t underestimate fish. Respect (and release) the quarry. Everything works better that way. ■