By Steve Price
April 29, 2011
Even though Todd Faircloth has been a fulltime pro for more than a dozen years and has multiple tournament experience on most of the lakes where major events are conducted, he still lives and fishes by one primary rule: pay attention to the first bass you catch.
”If you train yourself to listen, your very first fish of the day can tell you a lot about where bass are located and how they’re acting,” emphasizes Faircloth, a Yamamoto-sponsored pro and 9-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier. “If that first bass is a quality fish in the three to five pound range, first and foremost you know you’re doing something right, and that is always a confidence booster. But you also essentially learn the depth fish are using, the correct lure and retrieve to use, and more than likely, whether other bass are present.
“When I begin practice for a big tournament, I usually have about 15 rods on the deck, all rigged differently, but most of the time I can start putting some of them away after I catch that first bass. That’s how important that fish is to me. That fish immediately starts my pattern refinement.”
Faircloth emphasizes his first bass must be a quality fish; a very small or a very large fish is not normally associated with a school of fish, which, as a tournament angler, is what he’s searching for. Smaller bass, particularly, also tend to be more aggressive, but nonetheless, this can also tell you something.
“I’m not really interested in one individual small fish,” explains the Texas pro, “but if I do catch two or three of them in succession, I’ll usually change to a slightly larger lure and move to deeper water. The general rule is that schools of bass are usually made up of the same size of fish, and larger bass do tend to stay a little deeper. The small bass are still important, however, because they do confirm I’m in an area containing the right conditions for bass to concentrate there.”
The strike itself of a quality fish provides the first information, and it comes the moment your rod starts bending. For example, a hard, jolting strike means you were doing everything right: lure, location, retrieve speed, and depth were all correct, and you should continue trying to duplicate everything at least for the time being. A fish that hits and immediately moves away (with soft plastics) can mean that fish is trying to escape from a group of competitors, and you may have found your school of bass.
A light strike, by contrast, often sends a different message: the bass don’t like something about your presentation. A subtle change of color, switching from a silent lure to a rattling one (or vice versa), or perhaps a different style of rigging may be the answer, and these are all things Faircloth may try.
“A light strike might also mean your lure is too large,” he continues, “and this is often the case when a bass just swirls at your lure and never really strikes it. In my experience, too, I feel that the longer it takes to get my first strike, the more important the speed of my retrieve and type of presentation become, so I do change frequently.
“A lot of fishermen use moving lures like crankbaits or spinnerbaits when they’re still searching for bass because these lures allow you to cover a lot of water quickly. Sooner or later, the anglers feel like they’ll run into an aggressive bass.
“I use these baits a lot as well,” says Faircloth. “But I also like to incorporate a Senko, a jig, and a Carolina rig into my search bait lineup. I estimate at least 75% of all the bass I caught last season came on these three presentations. I fish my Senkos wacky style, Texas rigged weightless or with a light sinker, and even on a Carolina rig, so I’ll actually keep the same lure in the water, just present it differently, according to where the bass are located. I know I have to fish them slowly and can’t cover as much water, but sometimes bass simply are not as aggressive, and slow-moving lures are all they’ll hit.
“I think it’s important to start with a lure you have a lot of confidence in,” he says, “but you don’t have to stay with it. When I’m catching fish, I often change lures just to see what else the bass may want, and when I’m not catching anything, I change more often.”
When he does catch a solid three to five pounder, Faircloth also immediately looks at his depthfinder to determine the depth and to see how the bass may have been relating to cover and/or structure. Was it on the outside edge of a grassline? Was there some feature, such as a point of the grassline along that outside edge? Is there other cover on the bottom, or perhaps a breakline?
“You need to ask yourself why the bass was where it was when it hit,” emphasizes Faircloth, “because the fish was probably there for a specific reason. It told you where it was, and you should be able to look visually, or with your depthfinder, at the area and learn some of the answers. I think location is usually more important than lure choice, especially in what your first bass can tell you, because if you’re not around bass, you won’t catch any, and you can catch some fish with the wrong lure.
“I know, because I’ve been on the winning school of bass in a tournament but didn’t win because I was using the wrong lure.”
The depth of the water and of the fish itself is part of the location question, and Faircloth believes at times these may be the most important parts of establishing a pattern, since they determine the amount of light penetration, water temperature, and even oxygen content. At the same time, it’s important to realize the place a bass hits may not be the same place it was actually located – it may have followed the lure -- so Faircloth tries to determine how far his lure had moved in his retrieve when the bass hit. For example, a strike that comes right beside a visible target indicates bass are holding tight to cover, so more casting to specific targets is definitely worth considering.
“A school of bass may not be tightly grouped in a small area, either,” adds Faircloth. “The bass can be somewhat dispersed, and these fish sometimes are easier to catch because they don’t spook as easily or become as quickly accustomed to a lure.
“A lot of fishermen don’t realize, however, that a school of three to five pound bass also needs a school of baitfish to support them, so once I do catch a good fish, I also start looking for forage, either in the water or on my electronics. At the same time, very seldom will a concentration of bass gather anywhere shallow without deeper water nearby, so I immediately think about that, as well.”
With all of these things racing through his mind, Faircloth’s immediate task is making another cast that duplicates his first one as closely as possible. One bass, even a good one, does not completely define a pattern, but two or three certainly help do so. Two or three bass caught in the same area usually indicate a school of fish, but even one bass will be enough to keep Faircloth fishing in the same general and working the same type of water.
“You’re processing a lot of information continually,” laughs the Yamamoto pro, “and the more experience you have, the easier this all becomes, but mainly, you need to try to understand why the fish was where it was when you caught it. The more you can refine a pattern, obviously, the better your results will be and hopefully, you can duplicate those conditions in other parts of the lake.”
