Entry 80-5

Get To Know Mark Davis

Local Information

Editor's Note: You've seen Mark Davis on TV, perhaps have heard him present at a seminar and read about him in magazines. But, when you peel away the fishing veneer, who is the man inside the shirt with all the patches on it who listens to the roar of outboard engines all day while dancing across the tops of waves in a fiberglass bass boat? What's the man behind the legend like, and what kind of person is he? This week, we want you to get to know Mark Davis.

Davis: Local, general information about a lake can help you when you're fishing in a bass tournament. For instance, if you know which end of the lake has the most bass in it, which are the creeks that most of the tournaments usually are won out of, when the current comes through the lake, and whether the lake's rising or falling – well this is beneficial information for you. However, one type of local information often hurts more anglers than it helps. When a local angler tells you what points to fish, which brush piles will have bass in them, which specific humps to fish or certain lures to use, then this information may hurt your fishing rather than help it. Let me explain why.

You can become so dependent on the help of local fishermen that you forget how to find bass for yourself. I've learned that I can locate and catch more bass when I depend on Mark Davis and what he has learned over the years about pinpointing and taking bass, than if a local angler tells me where, how and on what to catch bass on his lake. I've seen numbers of fishermen lose tournaments when they bet on information from local fishermen rather than relying on their own abilities.

The sport of bass fishing is finding the bass, choosing the right lure from a wide range of lures and making that fish bite your lures. The more you depend on yourself and the less you depend on others, the better your chances will be for winning.
 

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