A closer look

At 53 miles in river length, Pickwick presents considerable real estate throughout which smallmouth can hide. You can just go fishing and hope for the occasional lucky cast, or you can divide your day into “looking” and “fishing.”

“Marking a spot can be useful, but typically, I won’t mark a place until I’ve actually caught some fish off of it,” said Bassmaster Elite pro Cliff Pace. “I’ll idle around, using Lowrance Sidescan and look for indentions in those current run areas on the main river. I’ll look for something that’s unique. They’re going to be in that current, but not necessarily in the middle of it.

“You want to look for little things on the bottom that create underwater eddies and slack water areas that are right beside the current. That’s what those fish are going to get in and ambush the stuff that comes by them.”

Pace sets his Sidescan beam at 60 feet on either side of his boat. This distance, he said, affords him the ideal balance of coverage and resolution. He can inspect a 120-foot swath of bottom with sufficient detail to determine the sweet spots that will attract fish. An average day can include a lot of time staring at the bottom machine, but the payoff usually merits the investment.

“Sometimes, spending more time looking at your graph and less time fishing can be the best way to find them,” Pace said.

Now, within this thought lives a deeper truth — one based on persistence, seasoned with suspicion and driven by the zeal for targets acquired. In short, don’t stop at one look.

“The thing you have to realize is that just because you didn’t see something the first time you go by it, if you think there’s something to find, maybe try going by it again at a different angle,” Pace said. “Change up the course that your boat is running. If you go over a point from side to side, then you might want to back out, make a circle and go over it from shallow to deep, or from deep to shallow.

“Looking at it from different angles, you get different views. Often times, you’ll find things on the second and third pass that you didn’t find on the first pass.”