Casting the Shade: Fishing Techniques for Enticing Bass in Cover

If casting is an art form, I am the equivalent of a giggling five year old stabbing my fingers into paint. I suck. And I play at it. It was not until I walked the shore of Prospect Park Lake that I realized the beauty in the arc of fishing line being swung at its limit or appreciated the silent whipping sound of fishing line cutting through air on the way to its target. Standing there, spell bound, I watched these great fishermen constantly recreate these works of art, and I realized that great casting is not simply how far you can throw, but it is something much more personal. Okay. I have my lure of choice, which is in this case a Senko plastic worm. It is rigged Texas style (see 7/20 post), and I have found a perfect target for this sunny and hot day, the shade. All I have left to do is cast to the spot, right? Wrong, there are many different ways to cast your lure. There is the overhead cast, the side cast, the underhand cast and the skip cast just to name a few, and the World Wide Web is filled with many well written tutorials to help you learn them.
1. http://www.angelfire.com/ia3/fishing/howtocast.htm
2. http://www.ehow.com/how_2098641_cast-openfaced-spinning-reel.html

However, as an avid surfer of fishing techniques on the web, I would like to suggest to you that knowing how to execute these casts is way different then mastering them, and no other target area, in my opinion, demonstrates this than shade and cover.

Cover may be any type of organic or inorganic structure that provides shade and security slightly above or in the water, and the best lakes have plenty and different types when it comes to bass fishing. Take the two pictures in the article. They are but two different types of the many different structure areas found in Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn, NY.



Now let’s analyze the picture on the right. I uncovered this nice shady area around 3:30 pm on a very sunny and sultry day. I approached the shore quietly, checked my worm to see if the hook was hidden and I executed a side cast to the very tip of the shade, and I was happy. Or at least I was happy until the 25th time when I once again did not feel the nibble of a bass. I moved on.

An hour later I came back to the same shore line, and I encountered another gentleman there. He was older and more quiet then his young counterparts in the park who are eager to question “have you caught any?” a million times. He simply smiled and with one motion retrieved his snaking fishing line and lure to his hand out of the water and skip cast his bait with just enough angle and bounce that it dug deep beneath a hanging fan of weeds to the real shade. And I would have been more surprised, but I was still trying to figure out how he was able to muster such a swing, and whip of his line without taking a chunk of my face with it. I was that close. He sighed, waited and repeated the procedure again. I just enjoyed it; he seemed to enjoy the cast himself. He must have cast a million times to perfect that swing and control. Somewhere around the third cast his line zigged and then zagged, and he brought in a nice two pounder, and we both continued to smile.

First, I’ve since read up on techniques about skip casting and realized that there are variations to anything taught, and secondly, I’ve learned to become a more patient and observant caster, taking pride in the procedure and process and not just the fighting of a fish as a reward.

Tight Lines