I had a great time in the pads Saturday morning on Lake Sammamish. My plan was to develop a new technique for catching Largemouth Bass while fishing shallow water Lily pads. My weapon would be an articulated swim bait jig weighing a half ounce or better. The trailer would be a soft plastic bait imitating a Kokanee Salmon. The plan was to fish quickly and cover lots of water in a short period of time.
This is how you build your arsenal. Pick a bait, design a plan and execute it. By God’s grace, perfect star alignment and little luck, it might just work.
Pay close attention to your execution and if you get bit, attempt to reproduce your actions. If you get bit a second time, you’re onto something. You may just have a pattern. If you’re able to replay all your actions up to this point and illicit a third strike, not only do you have a pattern, you now have a technique.
Now is the time to hone the technique to perfection. The flying fish technique for lack of a better name is what I’ll call it. This is a reaction presentation used to cover vast amounts of Lily pads in short order.
The first variable to remember is the size of the pads themselves. These are not mid-summer dinner plate lilies. The pads during post spawn are a dollar coin to tea cup sized with patches of open water. This is perfect for running a bait over and under. We could opt to pitch a frog instead of a minnow profile, however, you must remember this body of water contains the ultimate prized bait fish, “Kokanee”.
The second variable is the speed of the retrieve. Two words “Burn it” and when I say fast I mean wake it like a Ranger on pad pausing only and ever so slightly when you hit open water. This is the fastest swimming Kokanee any bass has ever seen and when they catch it they leave no doubt they’re attempting to crush it.
Get out and get ’em.
Nice, you provide veey detailes directions so even a novice like me can follow. Keep up the great work. I am going ro try this technique at Offut Lake this weekend.
Good Luck.