Schooling Fish
One pattern you can generally bet the farm that will occur is occurring now on the lake is the schooling bass. If you want to have a ton of fun and don’t care about size chasing schooling bass can be the pattern you might be looking for. With the bait balls continuing to grow comes schooling bass, their chasing feeding and getting their bellies full.
One of the keys to chasing schooling fish is to quickly get them to bite before they run from you or go deep where it’s not easy to get to them. The key here is to remember that schooling fish is all about reaction; whatever you do your bait must cause a reaction bite, it must cause them to quickly strike a bait. The first key is to position your boat so you can make long casts beyond the schooling fish; you want your bait to be moving through the bait not hitting them on the head.
There are a couple of baits I like to fish in schooling bass, the first is it is an ideal time to throw swim baits: I also like working a rattle bait through the fish. You can launch them out with good distance; you can twitch them and burn them over and through schooling fish or drop them for an up and down presentation. These presentations are very much reaction type movements and in most cases will cause bites as you move through the schooling bass. The next key to catching the schooling fish is rigging and if you’re not rigged correctly you can lose fish before you get a chance to hook them.
Make sure your reel is rigged with none stretch line, like a fluorocarbon or braided line with at least 15 lb. test as it will eliminate the need for a perfect hook set, and when you do set the hook use a sweeping hook set; as it will eliminate the delay in dropping your bait. The bass generally hit the bait hard enough that they hook themselves when using this type of sweeping rod movement. Next make sure you have a reel that will move the bait fast enough, so a 6:3 to 1 or faster is recommended so you can quickly catch up to bites.
Fish Lake Guntersville Guide Service
www.fishlakeguntersvilleguideservice.com
Email: bassguide@comcast.net
Call: 256 759 2270
