Photo by Ron Sinfelt

How many times have you spent a day on your favorite lake, beating the bank for a few little bass and wondering if you were the first angler to fish the bank that day or the 50th? Did you wear the bass out, or did you come home tired, bass-less and complaining that the lake had been "fished out?"

Sure, you caught a few, but they were small, and the action was sporadic at best. It was nothing like you planned or dreamed.

What happened? You caught bass in that same area when the lake was new. Now it seems like the bass have left, but you're still fishing there - along with everyone else.

SIZING UP THE PROBLEM In the 21st century, we bass anglers have a lot for which we can be thankful. There's more bass water (and more bass) out there than ever before. Of course, there are also a lot more anglers. It's reached the point where few of us are ever fishing outside the view of others. It can make for some pretty tough fishing.

Twenty years ago, every article in every fishing magazine told us that 10 percent of the fishermen catch 90 percent of the fish. It may have been true back then, but it's not true any longer. Magazines, how-to videos, television programs and a wall full of books have helped to educate the 90 percent of anglers who previously couldn't catch enough bass to stink up their livewells. Today's bass angler is better equipped, better educated and better prepared than ever before.

You see it every time you visit a public reservoir. If a point or a ledge or a patch of standing timber looks good to you, it looks good to the guy who launched his boat right before you did, and it looked good to the guys who fished the lake yesterday.

How many truly secret hotspots do you have on heavily pressured public waters? If you've got one, that's more than most, but don't kid yourself - that favorite spot of yours is really no secret at all. The guys in the other boats read the same books and magazines that you do. They watch the same shows, and they hear the same fishing reports.

Let's just admit it: Our competition is better than ever, and, in some cases, they're just as good as us. What can we do about that? In a word, nothing. But we can take advantage of what we know about our competition to improve our own chances of catching fish. It's no longer enough to know our quarry, the bass. Today we need to know our fellow anglers and find ways to catch the bass they're missing.

THE SOLUTION Once we realize that it's probably folly to beat the same banks and throw the same baits that the other guys throw, we can take a big step toward solving our problem. The best solution isn't simply to do a better job of fishing than our competition, it's to locate different groups of fish than they are finding.

Where do we find these fish? All over the place, it turns out. Just not in the places where you and everyone else have been going.

Chris Scandrett is an angler who knows something about breaking away from the crowd. He specializes in finding the bass that other anglers miss, and once he finds them, he catches them.

Scandrett focuses on just a few types of areas when he's looking for the bass that others miss. Follow his advice, and you can be casting for fish that have seldom - if ever - seen a fishing lure or a hook.

Get Away From The Bank A quick glance at your favorite bassin' water will tell you that most of the anglers fishing from the bank are casting as far out toward the middle of the lake as they can reach. Simultaneously, most of those anglers fishing from boats are within an easy cast of the shoreline. So what part of the lake is getting the most fishing pressure? If you think it's anywhere other than the first 30 feet off the shoreline, take another look.

"Offshore structure is my favorite for bass fishing at any time of the year," said Scandrett. "It gets a lot less pressure than the bank because most fishermen won't go to the time or trouble to locate good offshore habitat."

Scandrett's favorite offshore bass haunts are humps or "underwater islands." Find one that rises to within 10 or 15 feet of the surface, and you may have a year-round bass hotspot.