Jonathan Krause
From Pond Hopper to Lake Master: A Beginner’s Guide
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Growing up as someone in love with the sport of bass fishing, but in a family that didn’t really embrace fishing, I didn’t have many opportunities nor the connections to make it out to any big water. I knew from an early age I wanted to fish big water someday but didn’t know where to start. If you’ve never fished a lake before it can be easy to get intimidated simply by the sheer size and amount of spots you could potentially fish at, but I wanna show you how to prepare yourself to fish a bigger body of water and how pond fishing can help you hone your skills.
The first thing I’d do is go out and buy a baitcasting rod and reel. One thing I see new fisherman doing is only using a spinning reel because that’s all they know how to use but you have let it go sometimes. Doing this opens your arsenal up to so many different lures and techniques that come into play all the time. Go out to your local pond and get used to the way the rod feels in your hands and practice your casts religiously. Everyone bird nests a reel from time to time and you may go through a few spools of line in the process but it’s worth it. When you finally get your cast down and you can look at a target on the water and cast directly to it with a gentle presentation you’re getting somewhere. In lake fishing, accuracy and presentation can be everything so this is a huge role in getting bites you may not have gotten before.
Get used to how your lure feels in the water. Knowing what your lure is doing in the water and what your lure should be doing in the water is just as important as casting it. If you make the perfect cast to a laydown and it’s stacked with fish but you’re working your lure wrong then you could’ve just blown your opportunity. Research how to retrieve the different lures you want to learn and practice them. If you’re fishing around vegetation get used to how your lure feels when it’s clean so that if you do get your lure fouled up you will know what it feels like and can make the adjustment to make more use of the cast you made. In fact many times I’ve gotten bites the moment my lure frees itself from the vegetation it was covered in after giving it a few sharp snaps
Try to find as many different ponds as you can. Find some with a rock in it, some with standing timber, some with lily pads, and as many different types of structure as you can. A lot of times, ponds are just like lakes in the way they are set up and you can fish different features right from the shore. This can allow you to try a bunch of different lures and you can gain confidence in them and broaden your skill range.
Once you can finally make that perfect flip to a juicy lay down and you have confidence in your lure you have to know what it’s like to get bit. Fishing in ponds can be the best way to learn this because a lot of times pond fish won’t be too picky and you can get bit on a variety of things and boost your confidence but when you finally do get that bite on big water it may be one of only a few you could get that day so when it happens you gotta capitalize on the opportunity. Learn where fish live. In pond fishing, this can be a little harder to determine because bass can bite completely random lures sometimes. With that being said, find the higher percentage areas and if you get more bites in one area than another, or around one type of structure more than another, take that into account and take notes of it along with the conditions so you can figure out why they were there.
One thing I have found is when you’re on the fish and you’ve caught a few and for some reason, they stop biting, try mixing it up. Fish can get used to seeing the same thing and completely turn off so if you’ve caught a few back to back and you’re not getting bit anymore, don’t be afraid to throw something else in there because a lot of times it can keep those fish fired up. I saw this first hand this year at the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell while spectating Elite Series Pro Brent Ehrler. Ehrler was positioned on an island that had a long flat and he was sitting close to a school of bass. He would throw a senko in for a few casts, not get bit, and without hesitation throw in something different and it worked. I saw him switch at least twice before he caught a fish, and then changed again to catch another.