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Visually analyzing cover

Long before he’d dropped the trolling motor, picked up a rod and made his first cast, Dave Wolak had been analyzing what he saw in the cove ahead of him. The shoreline was rocky but not particularly steep. A flat point extended into the water and ended in a jumble of flooded brush. The water itself had an overall greenish/brown tint.

All in all, a perfect place to try a spinnerbait or pitch a craw.

The North Carolina pro chose the craw, eased his boat into position along the deeper edge of the brush and quickly caught his first bass of the morning.

“Analyzing cover before I start fishing is something I’ve practiced my entire career, and I think it gets easier the longer you do it,” Wolak explained. “Finding bass can be a big puzzle, but by looking at just a few features you can begin putting pieces of that puzzle into place.”

Most bass fishermen analyze at least some of the cover they see to determine lure choices as well as casting angles. Veteran tournament pro Dave Wolak takes this process a little further than most. Above all, he treats each type of cover as part of the larger overall picture of total habitat that helps him plan his fishing accordingly.

“One of the first things he looks at is water color. Wolak likes visibility from around two to about four feet. Extremely clear water normally is not particularly fertile, nor is water with visibility less than one foot (if caused by either silt or phytoplankton.)

“I have caught a lot of bass in clear water, but not very many big ones, so in a tournament on a deep, clear impoundment I’ll frequently look for more dingy water. On the other hand, if the water is really off-colored or dingy, I may look for clearer water.
It all depends on what else I can see around the lake.”

Vegetation is something practically every pro looks for, and Wolak is no exception. It has been proven on lakes throughout the country that practically any type of greenery, from hydrilla to lily pads, provides key habitat for bass, and lakes with an abundance of vegetation nearly always provide better bass fishing.

“Generally speaking, most of us already know if a lake we’re going to has vegetation, but it still requires some study. I want to look at it and learn the depths along its inside and outside edges, it’s general configuration and of course, its basic location.

“Even on famous ‘grass lakes’ like Sam Rayburn or Guntersville you seldom base your fishing pattern solely on the hydrilla or milfoil. You start looking for other cover within that vegetation, channels and depth changes running through it or special variations. Still, if I’m on a lake with vegetation, that’s generally where I’m going to first, and start studying everything around it.”

As he’s launching his boat, Wolak can also look at a lake’s general shoreline configuration for clues to how the fishing might be. Steep, fast-falling shorelines generally mean deeper water offshore, so that means he’ll have to search for shallow coves and flats.

“By contrast, if the shoreline is fairly flat, then I start looking for special features along that shoreline that might change the water depth offshore. This can be something as obvious as a point or a tributary creek entering the lake, or as subtle as a series of small indentions along that shoreline.

“Overall, I prefer irregular shorelines because they usually provide more habitat for baitfish and other forage bass will eat, and the more forage available the closer bass are usually located. Baitfish are always part of my visual analysis of an area. I don’t specifically look for them, but I always hope I do see them and take notice of where they are when I do find them.

“Points are always good places to study and analyze, but beyond just looking at them visually, you often need to chart them electronically as well, to look for depth changes. Still, whenever I look down a shoreline and can see several points, I feel like I have a potential starting point.”

Visible brush, laydowns, and standing timber are also important parts of Wolak’s visual analysis. All might be bass hangouts, but the best situation is seeing cover at different depths.

“For example, the shoreline can have rocks, laydowns or boat docks, and a little farther out I love it when I see buckbrush or some other type of cover, and then finally, maybe standing timber. Habitat like this at different depths almost always produces bass.”

A lot of cover can mean a lot of time spent exploring each option, so whenever Wolak sees something like this he immediately looks for isolated cover away from the main concentration of timber, brush or even vegetation.

“You can never underestimate the importance of isolated cover, no matter what type of cover it is. I can’t tell you why bass move to a single tree or a smaller patch of lily pads, but they do. Frequently, it’s not the cover as much as it is a slight depth variation or perhaps a change in bottom composition.

“You can analyze all the cover you want to, but at the same time you always have to look at the big picture and figure out how what you’re seeing in front of you fits into the overall context of the lake itself. The big picture includes water temperature, time of year and lots of other factors. For example, the best lily pad field you’ve ever seen won’t hold any bass if the bottom is too silty or the overall water quality is poor.

“Studying and analyzing what you can see in front of you is vital to finding bass on any lake, but if all the ingredients don’t fit then the puzzle won’t come together.”