It Pays to be a Quick-Change Artist
by Tim Lesmeister

I’ve been a fan of Mark Courts for years.  Courts is a pro-angler on the walleye circuit who fishes the major tournament events like the Professional Walleye Trail (PWT) and the FLW touring circuits.  What I like about Courts is he adapts quickly to conditions and it recently paid off for him in a PWT win out in Mobridge, SD on Lake Oahe.  Let me tell you what went down and how this model can influence your success.

The competition lasted three days on a reservoir where high water temperatures and low-water levels had pushed the walleyes onto the deep breaklines and into the deep timber.  Courts had a great practice period finding the walleyes on the 35 to 40 foot dropoffs about 40 miles from the launch site. 

On the first day of competition Courts ran to his spot only to find few fish showing up on the sonar.  “A lot of anglers, both tournament and weekend anglers, live and die by their game plan,” said Courts.  “I realized that something had changed and now I had to adjust.”

What Courts figured, and rightly so, was that the walleyes had moved deeper.  “The fish slid out into 60 feet of water,” said Courts, “and so we trolled Reef Runners (a crankbait that imitates a smelt) through them.”

Courts stayed near the top of the leaderboard the entire three days and ended up in first place when the scales had weighed the last fish. 

This is reminiscent of a situation I faced recently.  Three friends from Iowa joined me on a central Minnesota lake for some pike fishing.  Our first day on the water we found northern pike in 10 to 14 feet of water on the south edge of a deep hole.  They were biting on quarter-ounce jigs tipped with seven-inch auger-tailed worms.

We went to that same spot the next day and the fish were gone even though the conditions remained the same.  After a couple of hours working that same run where the day before we caught fish consistently, the entire day, we realized the fish were gone. 

I surmised the pike had moved deeper and seeing I had a 50/50 chance of being right we worked our way out into 24 feet of water.  There they were, but they wanted something different.

Instead of a big jig and trailer we had to downsize to an eighth-ounce jig with a four-inch split-tailed trailer or a three-inch plastic grub body.  They would only hit it on the drop.  The fish hadn’t quit biting, like most people might think.  They moved and slowed down in their feeding preference.

The lesson here is that too often we get into a rut where we use the same technique in the same spots for the same species and some days we catch fish and other days, maybe lots of other days, we don’t catch any because they’re either not there or don’t like what we’re trying to feed them.

“I put a lot of stock into the old saying that if what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else,” said Courts.  “I also believe, like most of the pro-anglers, that there are always some fish biting somewhere on that lake, river or reservoir.  You just have to find them and give them what they want.”

Courts referred to his win as a case in point.  “On the second day of the tournament those walleyes moved back onto the shallower break where I found them during practice.  It was like starting from scratch each day, because on the third day they moved again.”

Courts followed the fish and made adjustments to his presentation to compensate for the depths where the walleyes were.  “The fish didn’t move at all during the practice days, they were consistent, but when the tournament started they decided to provide a challenge,” said Courts.  “That’s not unusual when it comes to reservoirs, changing water levels and current.  Walleyes can be here today and somewhere else tomorrow.  You have to be able to adapt.

And that’s what you must model.  The ability to make changes; not as conditions change, but as the fish move.  It can be frustrating to be told where the fish are by the local expert at the bait shop, and then get there and find no fish.  Even when weather doesn’t change, water levels don’t change, current speed remains the same and whatever other factors play a part in fish movement is taken out of the equation, the fish can move.  When they do, try something different.  It’s a simple plan.  If the fish aren’t biting where you’re at, move and adjust your presentation to get the bait into the zone.  This game plan seldom gets used by anglers who get comfortable with a particular presentation in a certain spot.  But for anglers that are comfortable with the inconsistencies that fish seem to display, it pays off as proven by Mark Courts with his latest tournament conquest.