Captain Jerry Sersen shows a striper that attacked a topwater popper on an overcast day in August.

There are theories and techniques in fishing that are often looked upon as being stalwarts when it comes to casting a line. With time on the water, we can develop our own ideologies and call on those we’ve learned from fishing professionals to maximize the bite.

Being an outdoors journalist, I’ve had the opportunity to witness guides, charter captains, and bass pros prove fishing concepts. Even with what I’ve learned from the pros and my own experiences, sometimes I have to let things prove themselves time and again.

HIGH PRESSURE, HARD COVER
In August 2006, I worked with bass pro Frank Ippoliti for another periodical. He planned to exploit grass beds to hook some big bass. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has ways of changing best laid intents. A high pressure system crept in overnight, and brought high cloudless skies. Frank has fished long enough to know that when the barometer is high, bass in the grass have a great tendency to develop lockjaw.

Frank knows that getting contrarian bass to bite within the broad expanse of a grass bed is difficult when the high pressure dominates the weather. They can be anywhere in the grass so it would take far too long to probe it to find aggressive fish. It only took him 45 minutes without a bite for him to abandon the vegetation.

Ippoliti fished the rest of the day focusing on hard cover. He pitched finesse jigs to fallen wood and pier pilings and caught a good number of bass. His theory is that hard cover gives him obvious targets where bass are holding tight.

Every year since we fished, that week in August has yielded a high pressure system. I have used Frank’s hard cover theory to catch bass under these conditions. In 2007, I fished in a BFL tournament as a co-angler. Again the sky was high and cloudless and there was a 10 to 15 mph northwest wind.

My partner, a local angler with whom I was familiar, had a plan for the grass, but it wasn’t panning out. We struggled for an hour and a half when he asked, “You’ve worked with the pros. What would they do in a situation like this?” I replied, “I’m glad you asked.” It was a year to the day that Frank and I had fished. I told my partner that Frank says to get as far away from the grass as humanly possible and fish hard cover. We fished pier pilings and railroad bridge abutments and managed to catch same bass in the midst of the high pressure.

This past summer, Pennsylvania pro Randy Yarnall fished with me on the Gunpowder River. This was within the same annual week that Ippoliti and I fished in 2006. Conditions were such that the Harford County Chamber of Commerce needed to send out photographers to capture its splendorous marshlands under cloudless skies. We struggled to get anything going in or around the submerged vegetation. It wasn’t until fished pier pilings that we got bass to bite. Encountering these conditions and having bass react the same way is all the proof I need to hit hard cover under summertime high pressure systems.

PRESAPWN MOVEMENT
Pick up a bass oriented magazine in late winter or early spring and you can expect to read how bass will move to the second level structure and cover near the areas where they will spawn. This past April, I got to experience this annual spring movement while fishing with Captain Dan Kardash. We fished in the Susquehanna River casting to the pillars of bridges with crankbaits and worms.

The pilings sat in 12 feet of water. The region’s weather pattern had regressed with a cold front dropping water temperatures into the upper 40s. Captain Dan felt that bass may have moved back to late winter haunts.

It didn’t take us long to move on to where the proverbial bass textbook told us they should be, even with 47-degree water temps. We motored over to the Perryville shoreline and began casting spinnerbaits and crankbaits to rock and wood cover in the shallows.

Kardash caught bass as his lure reached the cover at the first drop off in 6 to 7 feet of water. The same pattern repeated itself after we made a short run over to the back channel on the Susquehanna Flats. The two of us cast spinnerbaits to the base of fallen wood close to the bank. Our lures would be struck when they reached the end of the timber in 7 to 9 feet of water.

SHALLOW SUMMER STRIPERS
As long as I’ve known him, Captain Jerry Sersen has contended that stripers can be found shallow in summer. Many anglers whom he’s told tend to discount his theory. I was with him a few years back in August on the Bush River on a day with the water temperature was in the high 70s. He commenced to pounding stripers on a chatter bait. Sersen realizes that stripers aren’t in all shallow water in summer; but given the right circumstances, they can be had. We had a high tide with the start of the outgoing current, and an overcast sky.

This past August, Captain Jerry and I were perch fishing in the Patapsco River. The day was much like the one on the Bush River -- overcast skies, with a high but falling tide. We were fishing a long riprap bank in 6 feet of water when he swapped out his ultralight rod for a baitcasting outfit and a rattle trap. Some big perch fell victim to the lure and he was also getting some stronger strikes, though the fish were not getting the hook. Sersen again changed rod to one adorned with a hand crafted popper.

On the first cast, a keeper striper busted the lure after the second pop. I told him that if he caught another he would have to dig out a popper for me. Sure enough, a few casts later, Captain Jerry released another quality striper and rummaged through his tackle for a second topwater plug. The two of us caught several more fish on surfaces baits in shallow water in the middle of summer.

With all there is to learn about fishing, it’s not easy to retain all that we read or hear. Yes, I am fortunate to have spent time with experts to expedite my learning curve. However, I can tell you this: It is an awesome feeling to put their theories into play on my own and with the fishing professionals who’ve revealed them. These are but three examples of proof positive fishing theories I’ve come to enjoy over the years.