Did you ever happen upon a bass accidently? Have you ever been trying quite hard to figure out the bass and what they are doing that particular day, and if so what and how can you put a quality pattern together?

We've all had days where it seemed like you can throw everything short of the kitchen sink at em and still come up with nothing but water dripping off our lures, yet there's these rare occasions where we haphazardly make a cast and wham! There's a bass!

To fully understand the functions of putting a good bass pattern together, we really need to take into consideration everything and anything that was present at the time we hooked that bass. For example:

1) Water color & temperature 
2) Bottom structure/contour
3) Type of cover: wood, weeds (and be specific about the weed type), rocks , boulders
4) Water depth surrounding the location of the bass
5) Type of forage within the area
6) Type of lure the bass hit (including color & size)
7) Aggression of the bass when it hit the lure
8) What direction if any did the bass head immediately after hooked.

If you chuckled at the # 8 example above you're probably not alone, but when bass fishing is very tough and they are not where you believe they should be and you luckily happen upon a bass, chances are that bass was roaming around in search of food.

If you could key in on the direction the bass was heading for during the fight, there's a very good chance that the bass was telling you where he came from and where his friends are. Most resident bass do not often stray very far from their lair. Matter of fact, most bass when they engulf our presentation (unless there's competition around) will basically swim back toward the place they came from.

A bass that was caught accidently or a bass that was caught while sight fishing that was roaming, will generally head back to where it came from thus leading us possibly to more bass. If we concentrate on everything that the bass did, its surroundings and the type of lure we caught it on, chances are that bass just revealed something about what the other bass may be doing.

That bass you just caught may have been on a holding pattern maybe 30-60 feet away in deeper water from where you caught it. The bass was simply heading into the location to where it was caught in search of food. Chances are if you turn around and make some casts out towards deeper water out from where the bass was caught, theres a good chance you'll find more bass out there doing the same thing.

Now is this a pattern or is it simply luck? If in fact after making a few casts to the deeper water you hook into a few more bass, you have found the pattern the bass are relating to on this day. Take all the information you have gathered now from this new pattern and use them on similar spots throughout the lake. It's pretty safe to say you will have a good day.

On the other hand, you may have just gotten lucky and found a drifter who was hungry and your lure was in the right spot at the right time. In bass fishing it's all part of the game. Sometimes they are where they should be, and most times they are not. It's up to us to try to decipher the puzzle and then put it all together.

Some patterns are quite easy to develop, while other patterns are just plain old tough. If you pay close attention to everything that took place while you hooked a bass you're heading in the right direction towards putting a pattern together. So let the bass tell you everything. After all, who is smarter? You or them?

Mike