"I've heard it said that reservoirs are easier to fish, and maybe they are, but coming from natural lakes and rivers I feel much more comfortable fishing there." So says New Jersey pro Pete Gluszek, who learned how to fish on the glacial lakes, ponds and tidal rivers of coastal Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states.
Man-made reservoirs (or impoundments) definitely are different than those types of natural waters. So to realize his dream of becoming a pro bass angler, Gluszek had to learn how to fish reservoirs. Following are a few lessons he learned.
Standing Timber at Lanier
His first experience was in a tournament. He says he "spent maybe two days on a reservoir" before finding himself at Georgia's Lake Lanier for a B.A.S.S. event.
His first impression was that he was "intimidated. Things are completely different" than natural lakes. "It was like I saw fire for the first time -- I was amazed. For example, there were creek channels. Try to find creek channels in northern lake. They're non-existent.
I looked at my graph and everything looked different," he says. "I noticed a couple of things right away. One was standing timber. That's a crazy creature when you're looking at it for the first time.
"I'd read about it for years, but I mostly ignored those articles (laughs). You're never going to fish it, so what's the point -- though I did prepare for the tournament."
Learning how bass relate to this structure, and figuring out the different types of standing timber, was "a major learning process," he says. "At Lanier you can be in 100 feet of water and be over 80-foot trees -- and fish use them." Partly that's because "a lot of areas were clearcut for boating, so when you get into the 30-40 foot zone, there's no timber" and thus less bass habitat.
On fishing it, he says: "When your boat is floating over the top of standing timber, the graph is loaded up and it's very confusing. Massive forests are down there, and it's like, where do you start? It's a new thing and you have to try to figure out what to do with it."
Applied Tidal Experience
"I treated the timber like inside weedlines on tidal rivers," Gluszek says. "The low-tide mark is where the grass stops growing, and on the flood tide it becomes the inside weed edge. That's a good place to catch fish. And where they clearcut the timber in shallower water, it makes a nice edge."
He adds that "you can also find points of timber, but they aren't points that jut out into lake. They jut toward land, which was different."
A New Bass
Gluszek says he had to figure out how shad and a new bass for him -- spotted bass -- relate to the timber. "Spotted bass were a whole new fish I had to learn how to tackle," he says. "They're not found in natural lakes and tidal rivers, but are very similar to smallmouth bass.
"In certain lakes you're forced to fish for spotted bass," he notes. "At Lake St. Clair the tournaments are dominated by smallmouths and largemouths aren't as big a factor. The same goes for a few lakes down South, like Lanier, Martin and a few others. You need to target spotted bass.
"Spotted bass are more schooling fish, and like smallmouths they travel in packs," Gluszek says. "They tend to relate more to schools of bait than cover or structure. And they definitely are deeper -- they're generally caught deeper than largemouths. They also spawn deeper, like smallmouths."
As far as fishing for spots goes, he gave the following pointers:
> "A lot of the times when you're fishing for spotted bass you can use largemouth tactics, but with a little bit of a twist."
> "They tend to react like smallmouths. They like speedy and erratic retrieves."
> "In tough conditions, downsize and finesse-fish."
Vertical Movement
"Anther type of timber you find in reservoirs is timber sticking out of the water," Gluszek says. Largemouths use this more than other bass species, notably in winter and summer.
"We usually fish tournaments in the spring and the fall, and the fish are generally shallower then," he says. "But bass tend to suspend on this type of timber -- they stage on it, especially when the water is warming. They will move vertically up that tree to capitalize on the warming water."
He also found that reservoir bass "will actually spawn in treetops. That was something really wild for me. If you have a nice crotch in a branch 2-4 feet down, the bass will actually spawn in the trees."
Man-Made Current
When it comes to current, Gluszek cut his teeth fishing two extremes: tidal rivers and natural lakes. Tidal rivers have lots of current, dictated by moon phase and wind. In contrast, natural lakes are "somewhat stagnant bodies of water.
"But with reservoirs you have a stagnant body of water sometimes and other times you have a lot of current, depending on (power) generation," he says. "That's one thing that at certain times of the year is very important to pay attention to.
"You're not going to get too many bites in slack-water situations. It's kind of like 6-8 hours of slack tide. You try to generate a bite. But when they turn the generators on, the whole lake comes alive. So you need to learn the best times to fish certain types of structure.
"You need to understand that triggering strikes is most important when there's no current. But when they're generating, the bass are much more aggressive so you need to be at your best places during that bite. In Opens (when they were draw formats), I'm more than happy to give up the mornings to get those bites in the afternoons since that's usually when they generate more."
Very Patternable
If natural-lake anglers find any of the above intimidating, Gluszek says that the best thing about reservoirs is that once you get them figured out, they're "very patternable.
"If you find fish on one creek channel turn, you can find 20-30 spots just like that. In a natural lake, the fish relate to specific structures and it's difficult to find several that fish relate to."
