How To Fish A New Lake

Knowledge

The best way to approach a new fishery is to learn as much as you can before you leave home. Look for articles, fishing reports and fishing tournament results at that lake. The internet is loaded with information for those willing to track it down.

Fishing Maps

Get a good fishing map, the more detail the better. Get a lay of the land to determine where the deep channels are. Locate large flat, shallow areas. Identify the major coves or arms of the lake, ones with a significant river channel or creek bed.

Plan of Attack

If the lake is too big to cover in a day you can focus your efforts on a small sector in order to define what the fish are doing. Select a major cove define a pattern of fish location for the day. This cove will be a miniature version of the lake. The creek bed in the back of the cove is similar to the major riverbed feeding the back end of the lake. The back of the cove is shallow like the river end of the reservoir. The water gets deeper as you move out to the main body of the lake just like the lake does as you move toward the dam.

Cover all your options. By fishing various stations of the cove you can determine where the fish are holding. At each station, fish deep, then medium depths and then shallow. Use lures you can cover a lot of water quickly.

Begin fishing this cove by starting on the outside corner where it intersects the main body of the lake. Once you've covered the various depths, move inside the cove to the first irregularity - a small point, brush or rock piles. Fish all depths and move inside farther to about half way back in the cove. Move again to three-fourths of the way to the back. At this point you are probably out of deep water and are limited to shallows. Zig-zag your way across the back of the cove making certain you are fishing all the way up in the shallowest water in the back of the cove. Now work your way back out the outer side of the cove in the reverse order to which you came into the cove.

Once you have completed this process you should be able to identify the best area of the cove on which to concentrate. The vast majority of the time you will find fish concentrated in one of three general sections of a cove: outside, middle or the back of the cove. Within this section they may move up and down throughout the day. Pay careful attention when you get a strike or catch a fish as to why the fish was there. Learn as much as you can on this quick trip through the cove about where the fish are positioned, and around what type of cover.

Armed with this knowledge you can now productively plan your day. You should be able to "pattern fish" the rest of the day, concentrating on the most productive section of each cove on the reservoir.

Also remember that the cove is a mini-version of the lake. If you found fish in the back of the coves they will probably be concentrated in the river end of the lake, in shallow water. If you found fish half-way back in the cove, concentrate on the middle section of the lake. Try to duplicate the type of shoreline and cover where you caught fish. Adjust your depth throughout the day to cover fish which are moving up and down changing depth throughout the course of the day.