How Rick Clunn Breaks Down Water Before the First Cast
by: Steven Paul
There is a tendency in bass fishing to make the process more complicated than it needs to be. Anglers can spend an enormous amount of mental energy thinking about rods, reels, colors, lure changes, line size and every other adjustment available to them. While those thoughts have their time and place, Rick Clunn’s approach is built around controlling as many of those variables as possible before they begin stealing attention from the real problem in front of him: understanding what the fish are doing.
That distinction was one of the strongest points to come out of a recent conversation with Rick. He does not look at bass fishing as a random process of making lure changes until something happens. His system is based on observation, elimination and feedback. Once the mechanical decisions are settled, his attention shifts almost completely toward fish behavior. Where are the bass positioned? What part of the water column are they using? How are wind and current affecting them? Are they relating to visible cover, subtle structure or baitfish? Most importantly, what are the conditions telling him about how those fish are finding and reacting to a lure?
That last question plays directly into how Rick selects a presentation. In stained or off-color water, for example, he is less concerned with endlessly debating subtle color differences and more interested in how a bass is actually locating its food. When visibility decreases, the lateral line becomes increasingly important, which places greater value on vibration, displacement and the physical signature a lure creates in the water. A crankbait with a stronger side-to-side action or a larger body that moves more water may give the fish a better opportunity to locate the lure and commit to it.
This is where Rick’s thinking about bait size becomes more interesting than simply saying a small bait catches numbers and a big bait catches bigger fish. For him, bait size is also a tool for gathering information. A smaller bait, such as the smaller RC Kicker, will generally generate more strikes. On unfamiliar water, that matters because the first objective may not be to immediately catch the biggest bass in the system. The first objective may simply be to determine whether fish are using that creek, pocket, bank or section of the lake at all.
A bite is information.
If Rick is practicing on water he already understands and knows a particular area consistently holds the caliber of fish he needs, he can afford to approach it differently. In that situation, a larger profile with more body, more wobble, greater depth and increased water displacement may be the better tool because he is no longer trying to establish whether bass are present. He is trying to determine how to catch the better ones. That comes with a tradeoff. Bigger baits may reduce the number of bites, and an angler targeting larger fish has to be willing to accept that. You cannot always pursue more bites and better bites with the same strategy.
That willingness to separate the search for fish from the search for better fish is a major part of Rick’s efficiency on the water. He is constantly asking what information he needs next and then choosing a lure that can help provide it.
Making a Big Lake Small
Rick’s method of breaking down water follows the same logic. A large reservoir can become overwhelming if you view it as thousands of acres that could potentially hold bass. His approach is to mentally reduce that lake into something closer to a farm pond and begin working through the obvious variables.
Once he enters an area, he starts identifying the differences that are immediately available to him. There may be stumps, pads, standing timber, windblown cover, protected water, clear water, stained water, shaded banks or banks receiving direct sunlight. Instead of assigning equal value to everything he sees, he begins testing those variables and eliminating the ones that do not produce.
That process is important because successful pattern fishing is often less about discovering one magical piece of cover than it is about understanding which available options the fish are currently choosing. A lake may contain thousands of stumps, miles of shoreline and countless points, but the bass are rarely using all of them equally. Wind direction, current, water color, available forage and seasonal movement can make one type of water dramatically more productive than another. The angler’s job is to recognize those differences quickly enough to stop fishing what looks good and start fishing what the bass are actually using.
When the visible targets fail to produce, Rick’s attention moves toward what cannot be seen from the surface. Old creek channels, brush piles, bottom transitions, isolated cover and subtle changes in depth can all become part of the equation. This is one of the reasons a crankbait is such an effective tool for breaking down unfamiliar water. It is not merely something being retrieved in hopes of getting a bite. Every cast can provide information about depth, bottom composition and the presence of cover.
Contact becomes information. A lure touching bottom tells you something about depth. Deflecting from wood reveals a target you may not have known existed. Changes in resistance can indicate a transition in bottom composition or vegetation. Over the course of enough casts, the angler begins building a mental picture of the water beneath the boat.
That ability to learn while fishing is part of what has kept crankbaits relevant through generations of technological change. Electronics can show an angler an extraordinary amount of information, but there remains value in physically contacting the environment with a lure and understanding how that lure moves through it. The crankbait becomes both a presentation and a probe.
Finding the Differences Before the First Cast
Rick’s process does not begin when the boat is launched. Preparation has always been part of how he reduces the number of unknowns before fishing begins. He talked about going back through notes from previous tournaments and examining the month, region and conditions to remind himself what types of water had produced under similar circumstances. The objective was not to blindly repeat history, but to create a logical starting point.
He also discussed studying aerial views to identify changes in water color, concentrations of bird activity, areas that appeared to hold baitfish and portions of a lake that simply seemed to contain more life. Again, the important part was not merely looking at an image of the lake. It was learning to notice the differences within it.
That concept carries through almost every part of Rick’s approach. Good anglers are constantly looking for something that separates one piece of water from another. It may be a color change where two types of water meet, a bank receiving more wind, an isolated stretch of vegetation, increased bait activity or birds consistently working over one section of a creek. Individually, those observations may not mean much. Together, they begin to form a pattern.
This is where pattern fishing is often misunderstood. A pattern is not simply “they are on stumps” or “they are eating a crankbait.” Those descriptions are too broad to be truly useful. The real pattern may be bass holding on isolated stumps on the windblown side of secondary points in stained water. Each additional piece of information makes the pattern more specific, and the more specific it becomes, the easier it is to duplicate somewhere else on the lake.
Spend Your Attention Where It Matters
The strength of Rick Clunn’s approach is that it is systematic without becoming rigid. He begins with an idea based on the available information, tests it against what is happening on the water and is willing to abandon it when the fish tell him something different. Experience gives him a starting point, but feedback determines where he goes next.
That is also why eliminating unnecessary decisions matters so much. Every minute spent second-guessing inconsequential details is attention that could have been directed toward understanding fish position, water movement, forage or changing conditions. The goal is not to ignore tackle decisions. It is to make those decisions serve the larger process rather than allowing them to become the process.
Rick’s system ultimately comes down to learning how to ask better questions. Do bass live in this section of the lake? If they do, what are they relating to? What is different about this water compared with the water that is not producing? Are the fish relying primarily on sight, vibration or both? Do I need a presentation designed to generate more feedback, or am I confident enough in the area to begin targeting a better class of fish?
Answer those questions correctly and an enormous body of water begins to get much smaller.
The lure is part of the equation, but it is not the entire equation. The real advantage comes from understanding why you are throwing it, what information it is giving you and what the fish are telling you in return.
That is how Rick Clunn breaks down water before the first cast, and it is why his approach remains relevant regardless of how much fishing technology changes.
