Bass Anglers Should Think Like Hunters

That's how bass pro Mike Cork (left) characterized the gist of an interview he once did with the late Aaron Martens. During their one-on-one, the discussion mostly centered on how Martens, as a "natural angler," prefished a new body of water. A statement Aaron made has stuck with Cork ever since that event. He said, "An avid big-game hunter makes for a good bass fisherman."

Martens elaborated some, saying that bass are similar to deer or other big game in that they have trails they use to move back and forth between feeding grounds and resting grounds. An angler who can keep that in mind can understand that there are three places to catch bass: where they eat, where they live, and along the trail they use to move between them. According to Aaron, the best place is a bend in the trail they travel...not so much as it may or may not be a gathering place, but it gives the angler a target to concentrate on and cross paths with all the bass using that area.

"As I try to zero in on off-shore bass," noted Cork, "I am continually thinking, and this has become part of my process. The bend in the road...what did he mean by that? I have come to believe that a bend in the road allows an angler to target all the bass that might be using that road. Whether bass are traveling to feeding grounds or going to resting areas, the bass using it will go past that bend. So instead of working up and down the road and possibly casting at a lull in traffic, if an angler stays put and keeps casting at the same bend, traffic eventually will catch up, and you can load the boat.

"I try to think of it like this. You're sitting on a side road of a very busy street, and you want to turn left onto this busy street. Unfortunately, traffic just keeps coming. Once one direction clears, the other is full, and you're still stuck. Eventually, though, the traffic clears, and there's not a car in sight, and you easily can make your left-hand turn.

"What if you found that perfect travel route, with a great feeding area on one end and a perfect ledge to suspend at and rest on the other? You work up and down the ledge and just can't get a bite. Could you be in that lull of traffic that you waited on while sitting on that side street? If you pick an area that is recognizable to you, you can repeatedly cast your bait to the same spot and wait for the traffic to catch up to you.

"Just something I wonder about," Cork concluded.