It wasn't till just last week I was thinking back in hindsight at an April tournament I was fishing at Garrison Lake here in Delaware, that though i had not had a bite all day, there were in fact signs that I should have been more aware of. I attacked the water with all I could muster. Water temps were in range for a good day and the bass should have been thinking about getting on beds at that point in the season.
This place is loaded with spatterdock fields and very shallow all around. Most of the lake is only about 3 feet deep and does not sport very much shoreline structure. There are some stumps in gatherings and a few that stand alone but are semi-difficult to pinpoint until you are right on them. This is not what I would call your run of the mill, pull up to a spot and make casts type of fishery. All of the ponds in Delaware are very shallow but not quite like this one. If you ever fall overboard and feel like you are going to drown, just stand up. It's like a giant baby pool. First instinct says why even fish there. But I have seen first hand in electro-shock surveys that this puddle holds some very decent fish.
I lent my first efforts to all the smaller patches of spatterdock. I did not want to waste any time searching for a needle in a haystack and there is one HELL of a haystack on the northern side of the pond. It does have the southern exposure which may be why the pads grew in so thick, but you could spend all week fishing that area randomly and touch very little of it. Especially if you are fishing slow. I estimated that concentrating on the much smaller and infinitely more manageable clumps of pads would offer me more time to cover more water. Of course at the time I didn't know that it wouldn't matter. I was mainly throwing a 6 inch YUM saleemander with a tiny 3/16 oz weight to make it hit bottom very lightly. Then I would follow it up with a Bomber floating shallow shad. Of course at the time I didn't know, that too would not matter. We all know you really can't fish pads incorrectly if you have any common sense so I won't get into details- since it did not matter anyway. I tried inside the edges, around the edges, dead center, open pockets and even tried casting all the way across and dragging it back, through the whole patch of pads. None of which even produced a sniff, let alone a bite. Once in a while I would see a pad move here and there which told me the fish were there. Like I was saying before. There really isn't anywhere else for them to go so the "where" is pretty much a gimme. The real trick was getting them to bite.
Weather in the days leading up to the tournament was playing a big factor in the lack of bites. Windy days followed by bluebird days followed by cold storms with a shit ton of rain again followed by wind... and then... more wind. This muddied up the water and I presume cooled it down quite a bit. The overall unstable conditions should have tipped me off right form the beginning and I should have come up with a less conventional game plan. This is why I'm still green. I can't adjust like the KVD's and (dare I say it) Skeet Reeses can just by giving a glancing consideration to conditions.
Finally I'll wrap it up with my last evaluation of the after action. 1. Should have moved around a bit more stealthily. I never cranked up the outboard, but I did crank on the trolling motor close the pads and I think the fish were on high alert that day. 2. Recognizing that the fish in the pads were unresponsive (at least to my presentation) I could have changed to a multitude of different reaction strike baits or better yet, try to find and focus in on as many stumps as I could find. I'm almost positive that this would have gotten me at least one fish. 3. Would have been more wise to spend a little more time on my presentation. Hoping the next one won't be so cruel.
