How to Fish Efficiently

Fishing is a sport of efficiency. Tournament anglers know this all too well, and there are things that you need to do as an angler to capitalize on every minute you spend on the water. Efficiency translates into more opportunities to catch fish. 

Game Plan

Before you even hook the boat up to your truck, you should have a rough game plan on where you're going to fish, not just the body of water itself but specific areas and spots that fish might be holding on to given the daily weather conditions and season. 

If you have been on the water frequently for a number of days or weeks, you might already have a good idea of where the fish are and what presentations are working. If you have established patterns that you have found recently, then you have an obvious place to start. 

If you don't have patterns from previous outings to start with, set a game plan by fishing one specific type of structure or area. Start shallow, to mid-depth, to deep water, along with varying types of structure, weed growth, cover, until you fit a few pieces of the puzzle together instead of fishing various spots in a random manner. 

Finding and Fishing "Spots on the Spot." 

What is a spot on the spot? Spots vary in size, and in many instances, a "spot" may be a long break or weed line that can extend for hundreds of yards or even miles on larger bodies of water. They can also be expansive weed beds that cover a large area. 

A spot on the spot are a smaller key feature of these overall spots and can be anything from a point, inside or outside corner, a deep spot in a shallow weed bed or deep trough, saddles, humps, or a section of a drop off that is drastically steeper than the rest of the break line. 

Instead of casting or jigging along hundreds of yards of break lines, you can stop at these spot on-the-spot areas and fish them aggressively. In most cases, these small specific spots will consistently hold numbers of fish and eliminate the less productive areas. 

Spot Hopping 

Once you have a plethora of different "spot on the spot" types of areas and you are having success catching fish on one of them, look at the map of the lake on your GPS unit and find other similar spots on the lake. 

Once you get your spot hit list sorted, you can fly across the lake on your boat and hit each one without wasting time fishing anything along the way. The tactic can be incredibly productive and efficient when you find a particular pattern that is working better than anything else on a given day. 

Don't Leave Fish to Find Fish. 

This is something my musky angling mentors pounded into my head as a young man, and it seems like it might be common sense, but I have witnessed anglers do this countless times, and I myself am guilty of it. 

If you see fish, have follow-ups from muskies in an area, catch a couple of bass, or get a couple of short strikes, don't pull up you're trolling motor and leave the area. 

After all, why would you? The fish are there, they might not be active at the moment, but all it takes is some change in the conditions to make these fish aggressively feed.

If you do leave these areas after spending some time there, be sure you return a few times throughout the day, especially if the barometer moves, a front comes in, on moonrise and moonset, during minors and majors, and at sunset. 

Final Thoughts 

Breaking down your day on the water in a structured and planned manner will result in more consistent fishing. As with work or other daily routines, organization of time on the water is a necessity. 

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