Q- Tell me about the pressure on Indiana waters.
TM - Well, 90% of the water in the state of Indiana is pressured water, because if you look at the stats, especially the Federation numbers, Indiana, for years has been one of the largest Federations in the country. We also have about the least amount of fishable water than any other state. We have less water and more fishermen, so everywhere you fish is pressured water. Here you’ll run across 10 boats in one little bay, while in other states you’ll have a whole 200 acre bay all to yourself. In Indiana that’s impossible. You always have one boat ahead of you or one boat behind you.
Q- How do you deal with all those boats?
TM - My look on that is that I just try and treat everybody the way I’d want to be treated. I try not to cut nobody off, don’t try and get too close to them, try not to stir up the water on them.
Q- What becomes your strategy when fishing our pressured waters?
TM - Ninety-nine percent of my success in fishing, whether it’s been tournaments or my guide service, has been fishing shallow water. Anything over 2 feet is too deep of water for the shallow water fisherman. One of the reasons I do that is because fish like cover, and the shallow visible cover is a lot easier to see and fish. We’ve got some really nice electronics now days, and I’ve got some nice electronics in my boat, but it takes a lot of time to go out there and find those little hidden spots in deeper water.
Q- Tell me about your technique for shallow water.
TM - I fish slow, real fast. There’s a lot of ways to do that. For example, I’ll toss my bait out and fish through an area fast until I hit a piece of cover. Once I hit a piece of cover, I stop. In the Bassmaster Classic, 75-80 percent of the fish I caught was by just holding my rod still with the bait against the cover, not moving it at all. That’s one of the keys, especially for big fish. So learn to fish slow when you get into cover. When you find the cover, slow down.
Q- And your bait choices?
TM - So in doing that, what I try to do is find baits that look natural or work naturally when they’re still instead of when they’re moving. That’s why I like the Stupid tube. A tube, with these little tentacles on it sitting still, with any type of current or any movement at all, they’re wriggling around a lot.
Q- How about tackle choices?
TM - I use fluorocarbon line because you can feel a lot. But the most important item in my opinion is the rod. The reel just takes up and collects line. Most of the time when I’m fishing, I’m dragging, because I can feel a lot better that way. So you want a high quality rod.
Q- Any other tricks for pressured water?
TM - In certain instances I really like a jet boat so I can get to unpressured water where people don’t fish all the time. With a jet on an 18 foot flat-bottom boat I can run across 2 inches of water. It’s what I typically use on most of my guide trips.
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