Pro Tips Weekly: Chad Grigsby

What’s your hurry?

Patience is a virtue to a fisherman. A lot of people lose patience when they’re fishing and leave a good spot even if they’re fairly sure that there are fish around. “The bass just aren’t biting,” or “the fish have left,” they say to themselves, and go on to the next place.

But I’ve never caught a bass running 70 miles an hour down a lake. Nobody wants to waste time, but just because you go a half-hour without getting a bite at what should be a really good place doesn’t mean you should leave without trying every bait that might work there. If you caught them yesterday on a topwater but they won’t hit it today, switch to a crankbait, or vice versa.

Be patient and develop a reasonable sense of what your time limits should be at different spots based on how likely they are to produce.

— Goodwill pro Chad Grigsby of Maple Grove, Minn.