5/16/2008

Innovative Bank Fishing

By covering every aspect of each hold bank fishermen can easily compete with boaters

Timothy Kusherets

Before making a single cast always take the time to scan fishable water even if it means risking snags like this overhanging set of branches. The inset salmon of lying on the ground and the jumping fish were both caught beneath the many snags on the far side of the bank. Note the seam that forms just beneath the foliage. The best way to fish this stretch of water was to cast even closer to the bank and the risk was worth the effort. The generally accepted fishing idea is “if you’re not fishing around snags you’re not fishing where the fish are”. You’d be surprised how often a great looking seam like this is glossed over by bank fishermen.

There are so many creature comforts that come with fishing from a boat that can’t be found when fishing from the bank; but there are advantages to fishing from the banks of water that boaters will almost always look over. Bank fishing allows for each section of water to be thoroughly planned, dissected, and probed to ferret out those hard to get fish that are sure to be missed by boating fishermen. Don’t miss understand, boating has many advantages over fishing from shore, and I love fishing from boats, but when it comes to being creative about fishing nothing beats innovative bank fishing. The first step to being successfully innovative means to plan out where you intend to fish before even getting to the water.
Planning always starts with the body of water found on Topographical maps, road maps, and trail maps; they identify the best ways to get where the fish are before ever leaving the house. Topographical maps show you the incline of where you want to fish and the elevation of water. Well informed fishermen know that “slope” has everything to do with current of the water and steep inclines in the water also means that the same incline can be found on trails; this dictates what to take along on the trip and how to trim the fat on weight. The steeper the incline of each trail and road will dictate how heavy the gear should be. Remember, for every direction to the water there is the trip back to consider, and that all translates into physical effort, which could easily turn into hardship if too much gear is taken along on the trip. Road maps will show the shortest routes to take and how much money will be spent in gas. In today’s environment of ever climbing costs of petrol fishermen know that gas now plays a key role in how far we can travel and how much money can be spent on something that has almost nothing to do with fishing, that is, until now. When fishing just down the road, local maps will do fine for finding the best fishing access points, but if the trip is over an hour away, as it is for many of us, then consider taking along a highway map, which illustrate fisheries, boat launches, and put-ins. Trail maps show hidden places that will almost never appear on any other type of map. Trail maps will take fishermen off the beaten path to those areas not known to most outdoorsmen, or boaters, and expose the best locations for fishing from the bank or shore. After using the trail map to find the best holds is when it’s time to dissect the water for innovative bank fishing be successful.
Dissecting the water is pretty easy when you’re actually looking at it and maps won’t tell you what the eyes can, so it’s best to wait until you actually get to the water before figuring out where you want to fish “exactly”. It has been said that you can easily take about eighty percent of rivers and lakes and discount them as places that fish will not hold in, which makes about twenty-percent of any body of water fishable. The physiological makeup of each species of fish will dictate exactly where they prefer to hold. What is good for one fish may not be good for another, which makes that “saying” of eighty-percent an iffy one of you fish multiple species like I do; so, let’s assume that most anadromous species of fish are in the water and go from there. Varying currents create holds where fish can be found, that is how fish find food and that is how fishermen find fish. Eddies, Seams, and Slots are the hold bank fishermen must look for when dissecting fishable water. Bodies of water that are either large in circumference or long rarely offer great places to hold from shore, so when looking at the water look for disturbances on the surface. Eddies are always formed by an outcropping of land that juts outward from the bank. To fish an eddy, always fish downstream from it and fish the farthest seam away from the bank, this is where many species of fish will be holding. The seam is the farthest “line” of water from the bank that shows two currents, one fast and the other slow. Predators wait in the slow water for bait to come to them from the fast, this is how fish catch their prey and this is how larger fish should be caught. Slots and Drop-offs are very similar in feature, but vary greatly in depth. Slots are exactly what they sound like; the configuration of an electric car track has slots in them the same way they can be found in rivers, Hydrologists call this a “Scouring” effect. Predator fish will hold inside the slot, where water speeds run slower, waiting for prey to swim in from fast current. Drop-offs are really any underwater “cliffs” that offer places for smaller fish to hold where eddies are formed, as a consequence of the drop-off, larger fish patrol them looking for an easy meal, which is where you can usually find intrepid boaters fishing, but this is about bank angling right now, and probing is the next fishing technique to innovative bank fishing.
Probing water is about finding fish from casting out and reeling in, and that’s it. This fishing technique can be done with just about any kind of gear. Most of the time probing is done is when there are huge bodies of holding water where smaller holds cannot be found; however, probing covers a huge portion of any body of water very fast thus making this fishing technique productive and fast. Water clarity dictates just how far each subsequent cast should be and that’s the only tricky part of probing. Turbid water is an excellent time to fish since the low visibility of the water does put fish on the bite, but also means that it’s harder to get them on the hook since most fish will literally have to have each offering placed right in front of their noses. Always cast near the shore or bank of where the hold is first and work out towards the far bank. If the water has about six feet of visibility then every cast after the first should be six feet. If the water has less than a foot then every cast after the first should be about a foot until the entire hold has been covered. Probing can be done in any hold and is the single fastest way to ascertain if fish are on the bite. Probing water has never failed to produce fish for me, and when the fishing gets hard it’s always a nice backup fishing technique, as are the others.
Hands down, innovative bank fishing is far and away more flexible than boating ever will be, but remember, there is a trade off. Fishing from a boat allows fishermen to gain access to areas that many bank fishermen cannot get to, and they can cover more territory on the same trip; but fishing from a boat tends to make wanting to move onto the next hold more impulsive rather than thought through, and that is where innovative angling comes in. Taking time to examine maps, dissect water, and probing holds allows bank fishermen the unique opportunity to fish water “thoroughly”. By covering every aspect of each hold bank fishermen can easily compete with boaters of productivity with getting fish on the hook, and that is what fishing is all about for innovative bank fishing.

Take a close look at the water of this river. Note the color variation from the water I’m wading in while I battle a hooked salmon from that of the water further out in the river. The shallow water is darker largely due to the color of the riverbed, which is laden with silt. The deeper water has a hue of brighter blue with riffles on the surface. The contrast makes it easy to see where the drop-off is and at the surface is the seam. Ideally, there are a few different ways to fish this area and all of them take some time to effectively cover the reach. The seam between the two depths of water create opportunities for drift-fishing, bobber-jigs, spoons, spinners, flies, crank-baits, and natural baits. Depending on what fishing discipline you decide to use each cast starts either on the deep side or shallow side of the seam, but all of them begin in relatively the same area. It all comes down to how much time one is willing to invest largely on the basis of confidence of fish in the water. During many times of the year anglers can depend on the fact that most species of fish will not disturb the surface indicating their presence. In almost all cases it’s left to the angler to depend on his or her ability to “read” water to figure out how well any one area will produce. In this particular case I absolutely knew that this area “could” produce it was just that there wasn’t any visible fish sign to prove it so using various fishing techniques was the only recourse. Completely covering a reach of water effectively is almost solely based on patience and how much time a fisherman is willing to commit to it. Most boaters enjoy the ability to cover vast distances in a short period of time and gain access to water that almost all bank fishermen cannot reach; however, the premise of mobility makes almost all boaters, including me sometimes, anxious enough to gloss over most bodies of water…this is where being an innovative bank angler pays off.
The techniques used to cover this water were based on speed, depth, and visibility. Understanding how to read water I covered a wide array of techniques before hitting into this huge springer chinook flailing about on the end of the line. Landing this fish would not have been possible under typical boating conditions since it took a considerable amount of time to effectively cover the entire area.