There’s been a lot of talk about Aaron Martens’ blackbird pattern on Lake Havasu. For my part, I think it’s one of the great lessons of bass fishing. More power to him. He was insightful and innovative. He identified what the bass were eating and then developed a pattern around that so that he could catch them.
It’s really a kind of example of what I mean when I say we should fish the moment.
Bass eat what’s available to them. Most of us can tell stories about seeing a bass eat a bird, a duckling, a snake or some other critter that’s around or on the water. What we didn’t do was take advantage of the moment. We didn’t fish what was in front of us. Instead, we shook our heads, laughed a little and then went off somewhere else to catch a big one.
We’d all be better off, and catch a lot more bass, if we spent more time trying to figure out what they were eating. Let’s face it — that’s about the best way to make them bite that I can think of. I know about reaction bites and all of that, but the truth is that you’ll catch more bass if they want to eat your lure for breakfast, lunch or supper.
Up where I live we have a couple of patterns that come along from time to time that illustrate what I’m talking about. The first one is the dragonfly bite. Every so often the dragonflies hatch. They’re everywhere. The bass feed on them to the exclusion of almost everything else in the lake or river.
You can catch a couple of fish on almost anything when that happens. The bass are actively feeding. But, if you want to load the boat, you’d better have something tied on that mimics a dragon fly.
The other pattern happens when the baby stone crabs or blue crabs move into shallow brackish water in our tidal rivers and along some of the inlets. As the tide moves in and out you can catch all kinds of bass if you throw something that looks and acts like a little crab. Otherwise, you’ll only get the occasional random bite.
That’s enough about that for now. I don’t want to beat the subject to death but, at the same time, it’s really important. Aaron did us all a service when he targeted bass eating baby blackbirds.
We’re still at Havasu. We rented a house and will spend the rest of the week here. It’s really nice. We’re going to rent some buggies and go exploring. It’s really cool to be able to ride around on hot sand and see snow covered mountains in the background at the same time.
After that we’ll head towards Lake Fork for the Toyota Texas Bass Classic tournament. I love that one. There’s no pressure, just lots and lots of fun. And Lake Fork is one of the few places in the country where you have a legitimate shot at catching a 10-pounder on any cast. It’s like the California Delta in that regard. That makes things really exciting.
Mike Iaconelli’s column appears weekly on Bassmaster.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter or visit his website, mikeiaconelli.com.
