EQUIPMENT & TECHNIQUE
Reading the Water
Rock bass is a cover fish. It likes to be near large rocks, as its name implies, or near submerged logs, docks, and other obstructions. Cottagers most often find schools of the fish under their docks, always available to the young angler.
It has been a practice at our cottage to leave the rock bass for visitors, particularly the young ones. We can always rig up a rod with a worm or weighted fly on a barbless hook and in a few moments have them catching fish.
In reading the water of the river, an experienced angler will look for moving water surface which has changing currents, riffles, and waves caused by water moving over rocks. Since rock bass avoid the very fast water, the angler will look for slow pools and back eddies. Fish will hold at the tail of a pool where it deepens before rising to flow over the lip into a lower set of ripples and rapids. A few fish may hold right at the lip on the up-river side to take advantage of all the floating food which approaches them.
Fast water flowing over a lip of a rock will dig a hole in the gravel below. Often it will create a back eddy which undercuts the rock on the upside. Large fish tend to hold in these impossible places; impossible because the angler is at a loss to get a lure or bait to the fish. The secret is to read the fast water. Rock bass are not trout; they cannot hold for any length of time in the fast flow of water but they can and do find the back eddies.
Reading the structure of a lake to find pan fish is made easier with a depth sounder and a depth map or chart. When combined with a thermometer, these instruments make fish-finding a breeze. When you know where the shoals, bars, and reefs are located, you know that the fish will be at the water level most comfortable to them. A depth thermometer provides this data. For those not so fortunate, reading the lakes becomes a question of observation and interpretation.
An abrupt steep shoreline usually indicates deep water close to shore. A long sloping beach will more often follow the same contour out into the lake. A peninsula usually runs into the lake as a bar or reef. Water weeds growing close to the surface indicate shallow water and good fishing. White caps which form in the deeper section of a lake usually indicate waves breaking over a reef. The natural evidence is there; the angler need only interpret it. To survive, fish have learned to loiter near underwater structure which provides protection from predators, shade from the sun, and an abundance of food. Rock reefs, weedbeds, deep water, and man-made structures provide most of these features. Keep in mind that seasonal changes in water conditions will cause all fish to move to more appropriate sites. If the angler was able to take fish in a shallow reef in the early spring, he or she should move off to the deeper sides and edges to take them during the summer.
