How to Think Like an Offshore Bass Fisherman

Honestly, this is the best bass fishing tutorial I've seen on youtube...and I think I've seen them all 10 times.

I love that you describe a game plan for attacking offshore fishing. When the lake is crowded with a lot of fishing pressure, it would be nice to have an offshore milk run. Instead of fishing docks behind everyone else. Thanks so much for your videos.

Man, you really break this stuff down to basics. I can see I've been too "Willy nilly" in my fishing and have been wasting too much time on non-active spots. Gotta get more regimented in my approach and more disciplined it seems if I'm to take advantage of the 'laws of nature'. Thank you sir for breaking this down like this.

Thanks a lot, Jonny. You opened up my mind about offshore fishing. Finally risked it, (nobody here to answer my questions, but online had all the answers), and invested on high-tech electronics and studied hard online, on how to interpret them, and was excited to see millions of shad while at lake. Later I upgraded to GPS trolling motor, to hold boat on same spot, but when I would fish a couple of spots, and zero strikes, I would get discouraged and go back to bank fishing, feeling that I just wasn’t cut out for offshore fishing. But now that you explained about fishing same spots at different times, I feel more encouraged to invest more time to offshore fishing. The example of; 8 spots fishing them 3 times, and hitting 5th or 10th spot at right time makes sense to me. While still bank fishing, I hadn’t given up on offshore fishing. I felt like I needed a key, to open the door for me to get back into the offshore game… If you get a chance to dedicate a video on desert lakes, we would love it. I moved from Arizona to New Mexico, and brush piles, laydowns, dock fishing are practically non-existent. Being deep irrigation lakes, they fluctuate 50 feet or more annually. But we have millions of fishermen at these lakes.

The birthday hat 25lb club cracked me up

Thanks for breaking this down in an understandable way. I’m a lifetime fisherman but am just getting into off shore fishing for bass. I appreciate you hitting us with the realities and probabilities of it all. I’ve watched countless other videos in my attempt to learn and many give the impression that if you find the fish you’ll catch them providing you find the right presentation. I have found, like you said, that this is rarely the case. Just like anything else in life, gotta put in the time and effort to be rewarded.

The Contour Whisperer aka “The Professor” strikes again!!! 😎👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

That's me, Jonny !!..The guy who would find the deepest water offshore when I heard I need to fish 'offshore'. 😂🤣😂🤣..AND, never caught any! 😂👏🏻👏🏻

Thank you - that video was made for me. For some reason I have always resisted trying/learning to fish off shore and partly because I haven’t learn how to use my electronics effectively. This tutorial was excellent.

Start a new tournament series with NO electronics and watch the pros beat the bank😁 I use your google earth and navi tips and get close with my phone gps then drag a carolina rig, or u rig till something picks it up. There are many great guidelines in bass fishing but the more I learn the more I realize it's a guessing game. Get good electronics, fish good lakes (more than once to make logs), use good gear , make no mistakes and put it all together and maybe you'll win a tournament. Thanks Jonny👍

I think you did a fantastic job at breaking down how to fish offshore.

Excellent video! I am a lifetime bank banger and and have over the past few years ventured offshore, as my dad used to say, for every one fish shallow there are 5 deep. You are correct in that it is all about timing and feeding windows - I have a few "Milk runs" I call them that consistently produce fish at different and varying times during the day. I look for isolated offshore structure that many guys miss - one major takeaway from your video for me is the 10 cast rule...I might go to 15, but as you very well point out it is just like shallow fishing. I find myself bank banging in spring and fall and early morning, then fishing most of my day off shore, especially in summer, and it has really improved my catch rates, as well as size. I get stuck on soft plastics and need to expand into jig fishing and probing deep a little more with jigs. Thanks so much for making these great videos and I hope you keep making them!

One of the most informative videos I’ve seen

Jonny, all of your Youtube videos have the best quality information available anywhere on how to actually catch fish. Theh best I've found. The very excellent Tacticalbassin focuses more on equipment and how to properly fish the gear, which is great stuff also. But you address a more detailed approach to understanding the underwater environment, which is so necessary, at least for me. What I like about your approach specifically is that you don't simply say "I'm running a crankbait over an offshore ledge," you show with the simulated graphics how and where the ledge lies in relation to the underwater terrain and the structure that inhabits that ledge. And your thorough explanations on using your electronics to graph an area got me to invest in a Navionics chip instead of using the onboard Lowrance chart, which is something right there LOL. Between you and TactBass, I spend far too much time in front of the 'puter instead of on the water.

Systematic and logical way of fishing off shore as well as beating the bank. Excellent content as usual. Keep them coming Jonny.

Great info ,I did kind of this couple of days ago . Caught 16 bass . No lake ..river fishing . Thanks Johnny ,your the best .

This is great. I recently moved to Tennessee from Florida. Grew up fishing lake Okeechobee, placid, etc.. didn't realize how two-dimensional those likes were compared to the TVA. I've been struggling offshore and you touched on several of the unrelenting questions as to whether I'm spending too much time in one spot, seeing fish and not being able to catch them so running through the entire tackle box, and so on.

I think Jonny is using the same approach in making our brains work in this video as he does in finding when the fish are biting. He says the same thing over and over hoping that at one time or another our brains will be feeding and he'll actually catch us!

Excellent interpretation Johnny. Your content has helped me develop an off shore bite. I’m new to fishing and Bc of u, I caught my first off shore bass. And now I’m addicted to fishing off shore. My biggest bass now always come from out there. Bank beating has now become almost boring. Thanks a million !!

Great material. Thanks Johnny