Tackle.net Logo

Q&A AI

How to catch bass in a stream?

Catching bass in a stream can be a rewarding experience, and there are several techniques you can employ to increase your chances of success. Here are some tips based on the video context provided:

  1. Downsize Your Baits: As mentioned in the "How To Catch River Bass" video, bass in streams and rivers often respond better to smaller baits. So, if you're used to throwing larger lures in lakes, consider downsizing. For example, switch from a three-quarter ounce spinnerbait to a half-ounce or even a quarter-ounce. Similarly, with crankbaits and plastics, opt for smaller sizes.

  2. Fish the Current Breaks and Eddies: In streams, bass often hold in areas where the current is broken by structures like rocks, logs, or changes in the riverbed. These spots provide a respite from the current and a good ambush point for feeding. Cast into eddies and along seams where faster water meets slower water. These transitional areas can be hotspots for bass.

  3. Use Natural Presentations: In the flowing waters of a stream, it's essential to make your lure presentation as natural as possible. This means matching the hatch with lures that resemble the local forage and using techniques that allow your bait to move with the current in a lifelike manner.

  4. Stay Alert for Subtle Bites: As the "Catching Big Bass in Spring" video suggests, bass bites in streams can be very subtle. Watch your line closely for any unusual twitches or movements that may indicate a bass has taken your bait.

  5. Cover Water Effectively: When fishing a stream, it's important to cover water to locate where the bass are holding. Cast to different areas, work your lure through various depths and speeds, and be prepared to move until you find active fish.

  6. Use the Right Gear: A good setup for stream bass fishing would include a medium-light to medium-action spinning rod and reel combo, which provides the sensitivity needed to detect light bites and the control to present lures effectively in current.

Remember, these are just starting points. As you gain experience, you'll learn to read the water and understand the behavior of bass in streams, which will further refine your techniques. Keep practicing, and don't be afraid to experiment with different lures and presentations until you find what works best in your specific stream environment. Happy fishing!

Related videos
Transcript
08:19
09:36
Video
How to Catch Bass: Top Fishing Tips and Mistakes | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource techniques and tactics, it's easy to get overwhelmed and there's this rush sometimes to try to learn it all. It's hard to do it that way. What I suggest is you learn three to five tactics or lures that you, until you get comfortable with and you've caught enough fish, you feel really good with it. Then start to expand your knowledge. Start to build upon that success. For me it was fast moving lures. I learned crankbaits and spinnerbaits and top waters, buzz baits, that stuff, I learned that first before I moved onto things such as worms and jigs and drop shot and things like that. Just take it easy. Don't try to learn it all. You got plenty of time. Get some of the basics down. Get confidence with that and then build your experience on top of that and you're going to become a much better angler. The next tip I can give you is maintain focus or don't lose focus. Okay? One of the things that's really hard to do is be focused throughout the entire day, especially when the bite isn't on. And that is what I mean by maintaining focus is knowing what your lure is doing all the time. Pay attention to what kind of structure it's on. If it's crawling across the bottom? Is it soft bottom? Is it hard bottom? Is it a little bit of pebbles or is it bigger rocks? Get to the point where you can tell rather there's a little weed on it or not.
Transcript
08:04
08:30
Video
Catching Big Bass in Spring | How To | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource or some kind of creature making its way along the bottom nice and slow. You got to be alert for the bite because it's very subtle. A lot of times, they just come up behind it, and they just suck it up, and they don't move. And you may see a little twitch in your line, and that's it. You won't feel anything at all. So you got to be really alert and watch for that kind of stuff. But that's how you catch these bigger bass during the spring. I hope those tips help. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
Transcript
00:00
01:10
Video
Pitching - The Essentials | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource Every lake or river I go to, when I get there, I like to try to find the heaviest cover it has to offer. Why? That's where the big bass live. And what techniques work the best to get them out of that cover, is techniques where you're using a big old rod and reel where you've got the leverage. Those techniques are flipping and pitching. Let me show you the pitching technique. All you're doing is getting lower, about even with the reel, and grab the back of your bait, and just an underhand swing of the rod, and that propels the bait out there. Keeps it low to the water, where you can skip it up underneath boat docks, or you skip it underneath a willow trees. You can get it to those hard to get places where you can't cast to. Makes it a great, great technique. I like it best when the water's a little bit clearer, where I don't have to worry about scaring them by getting too close to flip. Isolated targets, like stumps, boat docks, things like that, I have a tendency to do more of the pitching than the actual flipping. And it's just like the flip. When it hits the water, you let it go straight to the bottom on a slack line. Hits bottom, feel for the bite. If there's nothing there, jig it up and down a couple times. Go ahead and reel it in. After you've done it a while, you don't even need to grab the bait.
Transcript
07:22
08:38
Video
Early Spring Bass Fishing: 3 Tips You Need To Know! | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource And the bass...you won't know whether they're on it or not unless you fish it. So, what you need to do is cover a lot of water, fish pretty fast and effectively, going down the bank to find these areas. But here's the key, a lot of these bass are in large schools. So when you catch a fish, you need to slow down and fish that area thoroughly. And that's hard to do because we're used to going down the lake. We'd go down the bank, boom, boom, boom, boom, suddenly, bang, you catch a fish, and you're like, "Aha. That's the key, that's what I need to do to catch fish." And so you just keep on going down the bank at that speed. Well, don't do that because you just found the fish, and you're gonna go right on by them if you keep doing that. So, drop the Power-Poles, and break out those slower-moving baits, and cover the area thoroughly, catching as many fish as you can. And when you feel there really aren't any more to catch, lift the Power-Poles up, move another boat-length or two down the shoreline, and drop those Power-Poles and, again, fish it thoroughly until you're certain that there aren't any more fish to catch in that area. Pick up sticks, pick up speed, head on down the shoreline even faster until you catch another fish, and then slow down again, rinse, lather, repeat. And that's the way to go after these early-spring bass because they're not gonna be all up on the shallows everywhere.
Transcript
09:41
10:52
Video
Bass Fishing Tips For Beginners | How To Catch Bass | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource So, sometimes that's a better way of catching them, just reeling and giving a pause. And reel some more, and then pause. And vary how long that pause is, and how long you reel before you make a pause, just make it look erratic. Sometimes giving a quick pop with your rod just to make it dart erratically all of a sudden will elicit a bite, or using the rod, just lift up on the rod, and then reel back down and lift up on the rod. Gives that bait kind of an erratic and pausing motion, rising up in depth and going back down. Things like that often trigger a bite. One of the things I found out when I was fishing in a small lake early on, I don't even know how I came across doing this, but I grabbed a deep-diving crankbait or a deeper-diving crankbait, and I had just fished this lily pad field, and I came up to the edge of the field and I threw out. Now, I remember what happened. I accidentally... I didn't realize what... I didn't look what I had cast on. I thought it was a shallow-diving crankbait. I threw right up to the shoreline and started to reel back in. And this thing dug into the ground, and just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. I'm like, "Oh, I got the wrong crankbait on." So, I sped up and it just did this on the bottom.
Transcript
07:40
08:45
Video
How To Catch River Bass | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource I cast into that eddy because sometimes the fish will be in there and you can catch a few out of it before you stir them up and scare them by putting the boat right in the middle of that eddy. So work that eddy first. Then when you get into that current break, that’s when you start to throwing out into the faster moving water and bringing it right down that seam. And sometimes you can set up and you can catch fish all day long doing that, just on one spot if the conditions are right. I like to fish Islands, the back of Islands because then I can fish the seam on one side when the bait dies down I can shift the boat around and fish the seam on the other side. Once that bait dies down I can go to the other side and pick right back up again. The kind of baits that I like to throw, you can throw just about any bait that you use in the lakes, however, it downsize a little bit. I don't know what it is with rivers but the big huge baits don't do as well. If you're used to throwing three-quarter ounce spinnerbaits downsize to half ounce, if you're using half ounce all the time, downsize to three eights or quarter ounce. Same thing with your crankbaits, downsize a little bit and with your plastics, instead of throwing six-inch and seven-inch lizards, go down to a four-inch, go down to a three-inch tube. Tube is my favorite.

More Bass Fishing Answers

Loading...
©2024 Tackle.net