More Bass Fishing Secrets from the Strike King Pros

Editor's Note: One of the greatest feelings in the world of bass fishing is to know where the bass are going to be before you cast to them. In one tournament, a pro said, “I had developed a pattern on the foot of outboard motors. For some reason, every time I flipped a jig to a boat in a boathouse or tied my boat to a dock, there’d be a bass take the jig when the bait passed the foot of the motor. I soon learned that by running up the lake and finding boats in the water and casting to the foots of those motors with my jigs, I could catch a bass.” This kind of fishing is called pattern fishing. Another term often used is having the bass “dialed-in.” You know the structure the bass are holding on, you know the depth of water they’re in, you know the part of the structure that the fish most likely will be caught on, and you know the lure they’ll take. There’s nothing better than developing a pattern you can depend on for a day of fishing. But, there’s nothing worse than having your pattern blow-up. The bass are no longer on the type of structure in the depth of water or taking the lure that they’ve taken before. We asked Strike King Pro James Niggemeyer, “How do you find bass when your pattern is blown?”