One aspect of successful fishing is deciding when it’s wise to leave a fishing spot as opposed to sticking with the location.

When the water is cold, fish tend to gather up in specific spots, sometimes in great numbers. But the cold environment also reduces their metabolism, and as such they may not feed often. It’s a situation where it pays to revisit places you know or strongly suspect fish to be in hopes you’ll find them in a biting mood. And then camp out on the place until the action dwindles.

Take for instance three experiences during the past two weeks on various bodies of water and for different species of fish.

During the first, my friend Sid Brown and I were fishing Keystone Lake. It was a windy day, so much so that fishing our traditional offshore spots had become both difficult and unpleasant.

Looking for a less challenging situation, I pulled the boat close to the bank, in a place somewhat protected from the wind by a point of land. There a large fallen tree lies perpendicular to shore with only a bit of its trunk exposed above the surface. The balance drops at about a 45 degree angle into the depths of the old creek channel.

Earlier in the day we’d made a quick spot there with little success. At that time the wind was calm and we had moved on to check out other locations. With the conditions deteriorating, a return effort made sense.

With the boat hovering over 30 feet of water, we each dropped light jigs down until they tickled the submerged branches below, ones that extended 10 to 15 feet off bottom. During the next 30 minutes, we put over 20 largemouth bass up to 18 inches in the boat before the switch turned off. I imagine the fish were there during our first attempt. But the second one was “right place, right time.”

A few days later, Dave Keith and I were fishing the Allegheny River, this time for walleyes. River fish are at the mercy of what the river level/flow is, something that changes from day to day. Hence, fish location is subject to change, based on whatever the present situation is.

When water temperatures hover in the mid-30s, walleyes will seek refuge from the brunt of the current, such as areas below islands. On this day, the flow was up a bit. We’d targeted one “island area” around mid-afternoon with no action. A couple hours later, with daylight waning, we returned in hopes that some fish had become more active and slid up into the shallows next to the downriver side of the island. Our initial casts revealed that they had as we doubled up on chunky walleyes. The next few minutes provided several more. Then darkness set in and the bite died.

Late last week found me on a solitary outing on Crooked Creek Lake with crappies in mind. The lake level was up a couple of feet and rather murky.

Crooked Creek Lake supports a strong crappie population. But crappies being crappies, they tend to always be on the move. It’s common, on Crooked Creek, to see (on sonar) suspended crappies in open water, likely foraging on the abundant gizzard shad found there. At times they can also pack into submerged wood that’s imbedded in the bottom.

During this short foray, I noticed both suspended fish and ones holding tight to wood. My first spot was a brushpile in 25 feet of water. My first drop with a quarter-ounce blade bait was met with a 12-inch crappie, but that was it;15 minutes provided no more bites.

Seeing lots of suspended fish holding in open water over the creek channel, I switched to slow trolling. But in the 40-odd-degree water, the fish would not hit a moving bait.

With my time limited, I returned to the first brush pile and lowered a 1/16 ounce jig tipped with a one inch Berkley Gulp minnow (which is about the size of a match stick). The crappies were in a better mood and I caught eight or nine in quick succession before the action died.

If there’s a moral to this story it’s this: When you’re confident that a spot holds fish, it’s wise to give the place a couple of chances during the course of an outing, especially during cold water periods when feeding windows are often short.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle