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The first thing you need to do is get permission if you plan on bringing attractors of any form to a corp. of engineers lake. Understand this about cover. There is a lot of work involved. It can be done from a pontoon, but I can get it done in 20% of the time from my bass boat. Anyone that has seen my boats through the years, knows my boats are first and foremost work horses. Much the way a farmer views his tractors. Depending on the type, cover can take years to produce and there is a lot of expense involved. There is a lot of trial and error involved in cover placement. Most fisherpersons don't get that involved in their fishing to put forth the effort. An even smaller percentage know where to put cover, yet 100% of bass fisherpersons have caught bass off cover of some kind at one time or another. Climb aboard and I'll show you how it's done. The first thing you need to realize is our graphs are pretty useless in water 4 feet or less. Here's how to overcome that. Tie a rope that is 50 feet or so in length to your boat and create a slip loop to drape around your shoulder like as if you're delivering mail or newspapers. Get out on the flats and begin walking. You'll carry marker bouy's in a bag attached to your waist. Now your feet are about to become your eyes. I'm looking for drains and ditches within the flat that lead into deeper water. When I find one, I'll mark it out in bouy's and generally align my cover in a criss cross situation following the ditch into deeper water. This is a prime area that can produce numbers. If you can't find a drain in the flat, there's generally a deeper depression within a flat; sometimes several and here is an ideal location for an isolated piece of cover. If you happen by a flat that has fresh water clams on them, these are your hot areas during certain times of the year and ripping traps over shell beds can get you well in a hurry. Next time you're catching a few fish on a flat and their mouths are reddish in color, it could be that you are around a clam bed. It's the same thing around rip rap fish when they're on the crawfish bite. Boat ramps as well included. Moving off the flats into deeper water is where cover placement gets more difficult. If shallow areas aren't panning out, you can simply reharvest your investment and relocate them. Deeper placement is an all-in situation. On one particular water basin, I have 7 areas that are good producers. Not too shabby right? I have over 200 areas on that particular water basin which breaks down to a 3% efficiency! That fluctuates depending on the time of the year. This leads to the fact that you can have all the right ingredients to have a great area, but sometimes they just don't produce, and such is the life of a fisherperson. On the other hand, you may have a great area that will surprise you because of its location. Water basins have different personalities. For an example of one such water basin for which I have a lot invested, but most of my effort has yielded very little reward: "If you're not turning up mud, you're not catching them." That's her trademark reputation, and I'm learning the hard way to believe it! Breaklines are your keys to productive deeper cover placement. I can't do anything about fishing against 200 teams, but I can use that fishing pressure to my advantage in high profile areas. The average angler is a dime a dozen bank beater. Perhaps a dragger of points and humps, or a rap dweller. Learn to be a tweener. Fish your cover on that 1st breakline from the bank. That 1st breakline is where pressured fish will relocate and suspend to and if there's cover, they'll relate to it. There's a complete other topic about how fish relate to cover under certain conditions, but for now you'll be in the right area. Hopefully, I've shed some light into my fishing with this article. It's a blueprint towards success for the everyday local fisherperson like myself. Hard work and perserverance have no substitute. Luck will only get you so far. You've work to do. Be safe and perhaps more educated. |
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| In this photo the water levels are 7 feet low. Currently, they're about 2 feet low, but natural drains like this are what you're after. You can see that as the drain splits, a piece of isolated cover makes good sense to me.. and to a local beaver. |
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| Rear view. Same drain. |
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| Here's another natural drain. Again, it's easier to see when the lake is 7 feet low, but try to visualize yourself marking out this drain and putting cover staggered along the bends when the lake is at normal pool. |
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| Here we have a man made ditch. This homeowner dug out around one side of his dock and cut a ditch straight out into a flat dumping into the lake. The area holds a lot of promise with an angler's help. |
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| Given the water level is 5 feet low here (see the next 3 pictures below), I can walk out to a breakline which is normally at 8 feet, but now is only 3 feet deep, to put out larger isolated cover. If the lake was at normal pool, I'd have to opt for smaller cover from a boat. My GPS will get me close, but it's the dog house and perhaps, more permanent, the down spout that will help pin point my target upon return. Triangulation is critical towards improving the numbers of spots you'll have time to fish in your milk run during the course of a day. |
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| See the white dog house in the background. |
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Cedars are a great form of cover. However, the very things that make them special are its greatest drawbacks, specifically their denseness. Easily found on graphs, you should opt for 14 to 24 feet depth placement. Until you watch someone pull a 5 pounder off of cover that you went to the time and expense to create and position, you can't fully appreciate the need to better protect your interest. I like ridges, channel swings, and creek intersections for this type of cover. |
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| There is no photo available, but not to be overlooked would be crape myrtles. These can provide a less dense cover option for shallower placement. These are a favorite of mine on previously discussed breaklines. They also tend to last longer and are harder to see on graphs. |
