Been fishing many waters for decades - BUT

[senkosam]

Ya think you know a water like the back of your hand and WHAM ! you discover something new. Could it be that pattern-locations changed from last year or that they haven't changed much and I'm just discovering them now.

For instance, a local lake I know like the back of my hand has a new pattern that never existed before 2023: the invasion of giant leaf lily pads. They have crowded out normal size pad in many locations and continue to spread. This plant is invasive as hell and many homeowners are up in arms as they choke the water near their shorelines that prevent swimming. Those suckers have stems that grow to 6' that are very thick and fibrous. Pad diameter is over a foot.

Some public lakes hire harvesters to chop them up but within 3 weeks they're back. Question: are they fishable? Last fall I found out from a buddy who rowed his jon boat into them and then pitched lures into pad holes, that he caught bigger and more bass. No one else did as well fishing the usual mid-lake structure.


Another example:
One lake around the corner from where I live showed me two patterns I discovered by accident. The first was trolling a crankbait parallel to shore and 40' from it. The west shore was the only place I caught fish that way. By fish I mean bass and large crappie. In the same lake, I found years ago a long narrow hump parallel to the shore and 50' from it. Dang if I didn't cast forward from the bow and catch bass using small lures! I worked the hump for about 60 yds. and caught a dozen bass ranging in size from 7"-1.5lbs.
More important to me than catching large fish is catching fish in new places using my soft plastic creations.

I've fished both lakes for decades and discovered something new that hopefully be of use this year.