While watching Bassmaster LIVE during the 2020 Bassmaster Classic, I picked up on an interesting moment between commentator Davy Hite, 1999 Bassmaster Classic Champ, and his guest Rick Clunn, four-time Bassmaster Classic Champ. The action had been slow at the time Clunn was welcomed on stage. There had been little to no action on all of Lake Guntersville in about an hour and a half. Which is astonishing enough in itself.
But the real puzzler was that the fish had been biting all over the lake and in rapid succession for 30 minutes prior to them shutting down. Lake Guntersville is a massive fishery and the anglers were stretched out for 50 miles, but somehow the fish were behaving the same throughout.
So the question arose, “What do you do when they’re not biting?” What a simple and profound question. In years past, when we didn’t have metrics from the likes of BassTrakk (Bassmaster’s unofficial live leaderboard), we’d notice lulls in our own fishing. But they were singular events in our minds. When the fish would stop biting, anglers would just write it off as pulling into the wrong pocket or having caught all the fish on a spot.
Now with glaringly obvious data, we know that it’s not just us, our fishing or our spots. There’s something larger at play. So I caught up with Clunn to get his take on why we see this shutdown and how he recommends targeting bass when they’re not biting.
