by Bob Jensen

From now until ice-up, there is one very basic key to fishing success: You’ve got to be fishing where the food is. Actually, as soon as the spawn was over finding what the fish wanted to eat was a very important consideration. As the summer progresses and we get into the fall months, staying near what the fish want to eat is very important. Following are some examples and how you can capitalize when you encounter some of these situations.

Let’s say you’re on a body of water that has lots of white bass. White bass are fun to catch: They’re great fighters and when they’re on the bite, they’ll eat almost anything you throw to them.

You’re fishing for walleyes or panfish or pike, whatever, and you’re trolling or casting or watching bobbers: Again, whatever.

Suddenly you notice lots of gulls diving in a certain area just a couple of hundred yards away. If you want to catch fish, you should get over to that area quickly but quietly. What’s happening is a school of white bass has trapped a school of baitfish, probably shad, near the surface of the water. The white bass are eating the shad from below, the gulls are eating the shad from above. Not a good place to be a shad. Get within casting range and throw a bait that appeals to a white bass and you’re going to get bit. A Thumper Jig tipped with a three inch Power Grub is usually my choice. Crankbaits work well also, but I prefer a one hook rig like the jig so I can unhook the fish quickly and get my bait back out there.

A few years ago I was fishing with Travis Peterson. Travis lives near Bemidji Minnesota and is an expert angler for anything that swims near Bemidji. On this day we were fishing bass in shallow vegetation. Fishing was pretty good. Travis then noticed that a dragonfly hatch was going on in a field of lily-pads nearby. We got over there quickly, but again, quietly. Every now and then we would see a bass slurp a dragonfly off the surface. We tied on Jaw-Breaker weedless spoons and started throwing them around. What had been good fishing changed to great fishing. The presence of the dragonflies got the bass into a feeding frenzy and we took advantage of it. If Travis hadn’t noticed the dragonfly activity however, we could have missed out on the action.

If walleyes are your quarry, pay close attention to your sonar for the presence of baitfish. You usually won’t see the surface activity with walleyes that you might with bass, but locating the walleye’s food is just as important to catching them as it is to white bass or largemouth bass. The Humminbird 798ci sonar that I use draws a very detailed picture of the bottom and reveals if baitfish are present or not. This time of year, if I don’t see baitfish when I’m fishing for walleyes, I usually don’t fish the spot.

Remember that during the summer and fall months that if you want to catch fish, you’ve got to be fishing where their food is. If you remember that, your chances for success will be greatly improved.