Find and Catch Bass Year-Round with Top Bass Anglers
Day 1: Use Detective Skills to Find Fish
Editor’s Note: Never having been able to locate the biggest bass in any lake, I decided that to find that fish, I might be able to use the same strategies that a detective would utilize to find a missing person. He would begin by interviewing everyone who knew that person intimately. He would talk to the people who’d had business dealings with him, and he would gather information from the people who’d spent the most time with him.
 While hunting deer from my tree stand last year, I learned that tree stands are one of the most-productive places on earth to ponder the deep mysteries of life. You’re high above the earth and free to meditate – away from the ringing telephones, loud music and people with nothing to do but interrupt your work.  In a tree stand, a sportsman can try to solve the mysteries of things such as: where do the trophy bucks stay; how can a hunter take them; how do you decoy a flight of hunter-shy ducks; and how do you find the biggest bass in any lake?
If you followed a detective, he would interview and talk to those who knew the missing person best, and soon a pattern of that person’s habits and haunts would become evident. Then, to locate that missing person, the investigator would look in the areas where the person most likely would be. If, through interviewing the ones who knew him best, the detective discovered hideouts that the person had retreated to in the past to dodge danger or elude pursuit, then the investigator reasonably could assume that that person would use one of those sanctuaries again. I decided that the tactic I would employ to find the biggest bass in any lake would follow these same guidelines.
 My first source of information on how to find the biggest bass in any lake was Rick Clunn, winner of four Bassmaster Classics and one Angler-of-the-Year title.  Clunn has developed a sixth sense for finding bass that, combined with his years of fishing experience, makes him an expert in the ways of bass. “I have found that on any lake there are pressure zones, which are created by boat traffic and fishing pressure,” Clunn explains. “Big bass avoid these zones just like trophy deer keep-away from areas where the hunting pressure is the heaviest. The fish that will react quickest to fishing pressure or boat traffic are the larger fish, particularly bass weighing 8 pounds or more, because they have learned to survive by dodging human pressure and have become the biggest bass in a lake.
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