(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
As both a competitor in the Bassmaster Opens and a member of the bass fishing media, Oklahoman Matt Pangrac has spent his career looking to translate top anglers’ success into terms a layman can understand. He believes that’s helped his own fishing substantially, and has repeatedly stressed the importance of catching a limit every day.
“The vast majority of the time it’s four days and it’s 20 bass,” he said, referring to efforts that end up in the winner’s circle. In order to survive, it’s critical to meet that basic marker. If nothing else, it will settle your nerves. Accordingly, he’s developed a strategy he calls the “dink and dunk” to make sure he fills his dance card every day.
“The dink and dunk is basically a four-step system that I’ve developed,” he explained, noting that in years of covering major tournaments he’s noticed that top finishers often make the most of obvious patterns and places. Accordingly, he starts with four main elements when he hits a new lake: bridges, marinas, riprap and ramps. “I call it ‘BMR squared.’”
Starting with bridges, they are “usually pinch points, especially in the pre-spawn and post-spawn.” They combine several key elements in one place – current, which positions the fish, a replenishing population of bass, along with some vertical structure in the form of pilings. The position of the fish is usually reliable, and there are often secondary clues to success, like ropes used by crappie fishermen, which can give away the position of brush.
There’s often riprap next to those bridges. It is also a high percentage highway, and at just about every fishery it’s used at some point in time. Even when it looks the same, however, there are typically stretches or areas that outperform the rest. It might be a small point, an area where a channel swing hits the rocks, or a different type of rock altogether.
When he’s truly baffled, he’ll often start by fishing in a marina, when and where that’s allowed. “I look at a marina as a lake all unto itself,” he said. It’ll have docks, walkways, and sometimes brush or debris as well. Perhaps most importantly, marinas are often fish release sites. On lakes where there’s a Wednesday-nighter, a Thursday-nighter and various Saturday events, that gives you a head start. “Now I’m on Guntersville and I’m pond fishing,” he said. Even if the population of fish in the marina is finite, the clues that he gets inside that confined space can translate to other parts of the lake.
Of course, there are often boat ramps within marinas, but that’s not the only place they exist. Pangrac believes that they can be patterned, too – some have big rocks on the side, others have blowouts at the end. The most important thing is that the resident fish tend not to be spooky or jittery. He’s even caught bass as another boater was loading or unloading.
Pangrac makes his efforts even more efficient by simplifying his tackle. Of all of the bass that he caught during the 2021 Bassmaster Opens season, 81 percent of them came on a spinning rod, and he uses the same Denali 7’4” Lithium model for the vast majority of his light-line techniques.
If you want to learn some of the Bass Talk Live host’s limit-getting strategies, including various other aspects of his spinning-rod system, such as proper knots, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
