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Show patience with good fishing spot

A small brown bullhead, Ameiurus nebulosus, on a dry muddy surface of a carp lake.

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.

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