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Sound Advice - by Rob Brewer |
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| Silence may be golden, but it’s also one of the secrets to catching fish on a regular basis. If you and I never fished together in the same boat, you haven’t heard my lecture on noise yet. Bass-Jon’s non-boaters are warned, you’ll get to hear my spiel on noise sooner or later. Heavy fishing pressure educates fish quickly on what sounds and other stimuli mean danger. I think you’d be surprised at some of the activity bass are able to detect. The goal here is to avoid sending negative signals to fish that will send them swimming to the depths. Sound is nothing more than vibrations traveling through a medium, such as air or water. Sound in the air travels at 1100 feet per second, but did you know in the water it travels at 4400 feet per second? That’s almost a mile second! If you have ever scuba dived or snorkeled you know what I mean. Here are two simple experiments to reinforce this point. Next time you’re swimming in a pool, have someone hold their key chain in their hand underwater and jiggle it. No matter where you go in the pool, you’ll hear it plain as day. The other one is to cast a rattletrap out and listen to it through the hull of your Jon boat. You don’t have to put your ear to the hull. Just pay attention as you retrieve it, it’s quite easy to recognize. All bass, hawgs and dinks alike, are in perfect tune with their surroundings. If you haven’t noticed, so are the more successful hunters and fisherman. Ponder this. If a bass can feel the vibrations emitted from a minnow’s fins or a spinnerbaits blade, doesn’t it stand to reason that they have no problem picking up the vibrations from your trolling motor, fish finder or boat’s displacement? Those are the three “silent” offenders, we can’t hear them but the fish can. So what do we do? Well, the easiest fix is to turn off your fishfinder whenever possible, keep the trolling motor off and avoid traveling very fast in the boat. Of course we’re not willing to give up our technology or speed, so a compromise is in order. Use the fish finder only when needed and travel slowly long the bank with the trolling motor on as low a speed as possible to move you along. There are other noises that are far more dangerous to our fishing success. It’s the sudden, startling noise of a tacklebox slamming shut or sliding across the deck, a rod being dropped against a gunwale (gunnel) and so forth. There’s a hundred other noises made in the boat that half of all anglers don’t give second thought to. To name just a few: anchoring, coolers, livewells, shifting items in the boat, the list is endless. The bottom line is, we must make a conscience effort to keep our presence hidden from the bass’ keen senses. Of course, accidents will happen and we inevitably spook fish just as we will continue to lose some fish that we hook. A final note, it is fine to carry on conversation in the boat. Talking does not spook fish. Fishing is life. Rob Brewer |
