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Whenever your bait seems to touch bottom, be suspicious. Your bottom may have fins on it. When in doubt, retrieve carefully, so that the bait's motion retains its naturalness. With a fish on, you'll feel a throb. Then, strike! But should you have touched bottom, and not snagged, your gentle lifting may have activated your bait just enough to provoke a fish into snatching it up. Or if a fish does not take it, your gentle action has not wigwagged an alarm through Fish Haven. You'll simply prolong your drift downstream and perhaps take a fish down there. Fishing a lake successfully with its undefined bottom, picking out the best food and resting areas, is much more difficult at first than fishing a stream where most of the bottom is in sight. Reading a Lake, Chapter III, will explain this more fully. But lake fishing can be rewarding, fish tend to be heavier there. Once again, study to make your lure act natural. What the lake fish eats and how he captures it should establish the basis of your retrieve. As you know, most big fish like nothing better to eat than little fish, and a good share of their diet consists of exactly that, small fish, plus frogs, and nymphs, and anything good that falls in the water.
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