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Posts: 64
| I am just curous to know how other people dictate where they are going to fish on a body of water like LOTW? When staying on a lake for week do you try to fish the same spots everyday? I know it all depends on where you are seeing fish and what not, but will you pound the spots you know well or do hit some one days others another day ? I am sure it is all relative. I find myself hitting the spots I know best and have a tendency to "overfish" them is that possible? | |
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Posts: 2024
| We fish LOTW (Sab Bay) and have a milk run of spots... at first. The beauty of a place like LOTW is the diversity of spots, and half the fun is exploring that diversity.
When we arrive we fish the usual spots that have produced action for us in the past - saddles, weed beds, bays, boulders, rock points, islands, etc. We will try to figure out what type of cover (rocks vs. weeds) the fish seem to relate to, break the map out, and try to duplicate the spots we are having success on. So each year we add more spots to our "milk run." There isn't a single day that we don't fish new spots. We often fish in big circles around the camp: go west, then north, head south or go east, head north, drive west, and back south. This type of fishing doesn't allow us to fish the same milk run over and over, but there are spots that we will hit multiple times a day that have been good for us in the past.
The "milk run" is only used at the beginning of the trip. The rest of the time is spent fishing some of those spots, but also exploring other areas. | |
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Posts: 580
| Similar to Sean, on LOTW we start off on our tried and true milkrun of spots. We have spots that are categorized by letter grade...the "A+" spots obviously get the most attention. We always try to fish several new spots daily, and even try to add a new spot in to our "prime-time" milkrun. (My thought being that if you never fish a new spot during "prime time", do you really know what the spot is capable of?).
Over time, our milkrun has gotten to be more expansive and diverse in terms of types of structure. Which is a really good thing, and has been our goal all along, since it's very helpful in patterning like Sean is saying above..
Every trip, we add a few more spots. But overall, probably 70-80% of our time on the water is spent fishing proven spots and our "A+" spots typically get fished at least twice daily, if not more depending on what we're seeing.
Occasionally, we'll make a longer run to areas that we aren't very familiar with and spend a full or 1/2 day exploring. Usually that comes later in the trip, and only if we've got some quality fish under our belt. Otherwise, it's pretty tough to leave the milkrun. | |
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Posts: 247
Location: Uxbridge Ontario | I guess for me there are 2 types of Milkruns. There are the good spots that you just cant pass up and systematically fish daily as they are past producers. And there is the evening Milk run or run and gun where you have raise fish that day. I cant always say for sure if I will hit a spot that once was hot (but with multiple trips in a week see very little of interest) that I will go back during what I have determined as a feeding window, if I had raised good fish that didn't take on other spots. But there are some spot that I would call super producers that even if a fish wasn't raised, I will be back to it again and again and most likely include on an evening run. I like location and proximity has a lot to do with you "milk run" at the time, but a lot of the time its a gut feeling.
I do agree that exploration should be done. Even the smallest of spots on a map could greatly overlooked but be incredible, as maps can show you anything. These spots are never found if you Milk run a few spots over and over. | |
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Posts: 439
Location: Lake of the Woods, Morson, Ontario | Great stuff from Sean and Matt here. One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was just starting out fishing 5 years ago was that you should never do your exploring when times are tough on your usual A+ milk run spots.
As Matt said about prime time showing you what they can do, dont expect new areas and spots to show you fish when your best spots are dry for a period of a day, two days or longer.
Hit some of those new spots when you see fish on your first 4-5 milk run spots that day. Some days you might find there are fish all over and everything that looks fishy gives you something.
For a body of water like LOTW..you are doing yourself a bit of a disservice (in my opinion) by not learning new areas and spots a little bit each trip. Unless you are catching a half dozen fish 52-55 inches every year during your week, then you should keep trying new stuff because those fish are out there somewhere. There is just so much structure and area for them to hide in.
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Posts: 69
| We pretty much follow what the guys are saying at Sab. We have so many places to fish that we can't cover them all in 2 weeks. First couple of days we hit an assortment of structure looking for a pattern. We alternate where what runs we are going to make according to weather, and especially wind conditions. The last couple of years it seems to be a lot windier, so if the wind has been blowing hard for a couple of days from the West, we'll make runs hitting shoreline facing East and North or South facing areas that are not getting pounded by waves. Every trip we decide to try an area we haven't fished or maybe ignored for quite a few years, before we start our trip. One thing that really changed our plans this year was the lack of weeds in some of our best spots. We'd be looking for floating weeds anywhere and hit those spots on our runs, even if it was only a 8-10' area in a small cove. Produced quite a few fish doing that. Be flexible. Years ago we would just pound honey holes with the idea they would be in there sometime. Worked sometimes, but too often we had less than satisfactory trips. | |
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Milk Run ..... How do you do it?