DOUBLE DIPPING SPOONS
How to Find Cover
 EDITOR'S
NOTE: You can have your cake and eat it too. Charlie
Ingram, a bass fisherman on Lake Eufaula in Eufaula,
Alabama, on the Georgia/Alabama border, practices catch
and release when he fishes for bass. But he also takes
home a mess of crappie for the skillet on almost every
outing. Ingram has developed a technique for bass fishing
that allows him to catch big bass and large crappie
at the same time. The bass go in his back livewell,
and he shows them to his buddies at the marina before
he releases them. He puts the crappie he catches in
his front livewell and never opens it until he arrives
at home.  Then
he takes the speckled sides out to fillet. While fishing
a jigging spoon at almost any time of the year, Ingram
catches crappie weighing 3/4-pound to 2-pounds each.
Also when fishing a jigging spoon in these same places,
Ingram takes bass weighing 2- to 10-pounds each.
In years past, Charlie Ingram used his depthfinder
to locate stumps and submerged tree tops on the edges
of creek and river channels where he wanted to fish.
Often he saw fish on his depthfinder, but at other times
he didn't see any fish even on a small bit of cover.
But he kept on fishing. "I  fish
every piece of cover I find on a river or a creek ledge
because many times depthfinders will lie," Ingram
said. "The depthfinder often will show no fish
holding on cover when in fact plenty of fish are on
that spot. The depthfinder doesn't really lie. It just
doesn't have the ability to look under limbs, logs and
stumps where fish are sitting in ambush. Also if fish
are holding outside the cone angle of the depthfinder,
you can't spot them. I've learned to use my depthfinder
to locate cover and depend on my jigging spoon to find
the fish."
 Many
anglers who fish vertically won't stop and fish a piece
of cover where they don't see any fish. However, they
should, as Ingram has proved over and over again. "Bass
have a notorious reputation for lying under stumps,
limbs or roots," Ingram reported. "The depthfinder
can show you the stumps, limbs or roots, but it can't
show you the fish under that structure. Therefore, if
you fish any underwater cover and not only cover where
you see fish holding, many times you'll catch more and
bigger bass and crappie than you will if you just fish
the spots where you've seen fish holding on the cover
with your depthfinder."
TOMORROW: HOW TO FISH THE JIGGING
SPOON IN DEEP STRUCTURE
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