Pro Tips Weekly: Castrol Pro David Dudley

Relocating Offshore Bass

All those boats you see cutting figure 8s over ledges are looking for bass, and some of them are trying to relocate fish that they’ve found before. Basically, there are three things to consider.

First, if the school you’ve marked in a certain place – say, a long underwater bar or stretch of vertical ledge – isn’t there next time, the fish are likely to be somewhere in the range of maybe 50 yards in any direction from where you waypointed them in the first place. You idle around using your StructureScan until you relocate them, then make a few casts and try to get them fired up.

The second type of area isn’t a roaming spot. It’s fairly small, and the fish on this non-roaming spot are always in the same place. You don’t need to idle around on these fish; you just pull up to the spot you’ve marked before and start casting from a certain angle. In 10 casts you know if there are fish there or not.

The third type of spot that might produce a lot of fish for you could be a non-roaming spot or a big long bar or a stretch of ledge, but what they have in common is that the water is fairly shallow over them. If, say, the water is only about 10 or 12 feet deep, and you’ve got 3 or 4 feet of boat and motor sitting down in the water – well, that’s scary to the fish. So most of them are going to be gone by the time you get over where they were. If the water is less than 15 feet, I look for bass the old-school way: I ease up to the spot and start casting and moving until I get on them. It might take awhile, but when you find them you can really hit the jackpot.