WILD BLOG: Sight fishing from an anti-sight-fisherman's perspective
UPDATED April, 2009

He’s the anti-sight-fisherman. The Bizarro of the West Coast shallow-water fishing world.

While the rest of the Washington, Oregon and northern California bass mafia titters with glee in anticipation of the oncoming shallow-water sight bite, $2 Milllion Man Gary Dobyns groans when I tell him that I’m going to make him talk about sight fishing.

“Dude,” Dobyns rumbles, “I’m the world’s worst sight fisherman. Don’t make me talk about sight fishing. Seriously. I don’t have the patience for it. I go out there, see a fish on a bed, make one cast, and if it doesn’t bite, I’m done. It drives me freakin’ crazy to think that there could be another fish somewhere down the bank that wants to bite.”

Who am I to argue with a man who’s cashed over $2 million in tournament winnings in his career and won 39 bass boats to boot?

Dobyns is easily one of the most successful tournament fisherman in the history of the sport, and a guy whose attacking, go-for-broke style drastically changed the style of tournament fishing on the West Coast. Back in the 1980s, when Dobyns’ tournament rampage began, the tournament mindset was this: fish for as many bites as possible, catch 30 fish in a day, and cull like a sonofabitch.

Then along came Dobyns, with a bold, attacking style that better suited a big-game hunter than a bass fisherman. While the rest of the tournament fields plinked and plunked for 2-pounders, Dobyns ripped, cranked and slashed for five or six fish a day … and they were inevitably BIG fish. If the 5- and 6-pounders weren’t biting in Slough A, Dobyns yanked up the trolling motor and roared off to Slough B.

So maybe sight-fishing isn’t Big G’s cup of tea.

This time of year, though – when largemouth start to slowly move into the 10-foot-or-shallower zone – it's time to start investigating those old sight-fishing haunts.

Here’s how the West Coast’s must successful “anti-sight-fisherman” targets shallow-water fish in April and May:

Blind casting with Senkos
One of Dobyns’ favorite April fisheries, Clear Lake, is picture-perfect for blind-casting Senkos on shallow flats, which is “medium-range bed fishing”: you’re not pulling right up on beds and flipping baits onto them, but holding slightly offshore and casting into the shallows for the same groups of fish that the sight-fishermen are scoping out. This is a technique that'll work at any similar lake on the West Coast, and an offshoot of it - casting drop-shot rigs in shallow water - is killer for certain parts of Lake Washington.

Basically, the same areas where sight-anglers hug the banks, flipping jigs and tubes are also prime blind-casting locales.

“You’re not right up on top of the beds, so fish don’t see you,” Dobyns says.  

Swimbaits
I've seen more swimbaits in the sight-fishing arsenals of Pacific Northwest anglers lately, and for good reason. Lizards and jigs have been part of the standard baits on, say, Lake Sammamish, but those largemouth in the shallow flats on the north end will react to a swimbait, too. So will the smallies guarding their beds around the perimeter of Lake Washington's neighbor.

Give 'em a try.

-JS