Many lakes these days don't allow huge motorboats. A great deal of seasoned anglers like to fish these lakes, because they don't have weekend warriors blowing all over the place, showing off their green glitter bass boat. There are thousands of lakes and ponds across the country that have great large motor restrictions on them. This keeps all the fair weather fisherman far, far away from the fattest fish in the land. These heavily restricted lakes are like gold mines of above average fish. Especially, if you use a small fishing boat or a canoe to navigate their hot spots.



Many no motor lakes have rental boats that cost a pretty penny to rent out by the hour, and then you have to abide by their rules and regulations, and have the boat in by a certain time of day. Die hard fisherman don't like to have their fishing interrupted by normal civilized hours. Buying your own canoe, raft, or kayak is the way to go. It will provide you with years of fun if you take care of it. Additionally, having a smaller watercraft will force you to start thinking about smaller bodies of water to visit. Tons of anglers prefer exploring small bodies of water that have virtually no one on them.

A small boat with or without a little motor can get you up into shallow coves and stream channels that people can't get to by foot(because of mud). A lot of the time, today's lakes and reservoirs are dammed up, and the streams leading into them are far away from parking areas. No one has the desire to travel by foot or paddle all the way into the nooks and crannies that hold the biggest fish in the lake, except the die hards. In the summer, many species of fish love to migrate to stream mouths, especially if the body of water is relatively shallow, because they need to find some cooler water. Sometimes there will be thousands of fish stacked up around a stream mouth. When you glide over them with your boat, you will be in absolute shock at the sheer number of them. Many lakes and ponds have this type of scenario on them. You just need to get out and do some exploring.

While you navigate from place to place in your small boat, you can throw out a line or two, and troll. The lure you choose to troll with has a lot to do with how deep the body of water is. But, one of the best lures to troll with is a spoon. It has great flash and action no matter what speed you are traveling at, and you can find them in tons of different sizes to get to just the right depth. If you are moving around a shallow cove, you can cast out a top water lure far behind your boat, stick your rod in a holder or some make shift holder, and just cruise around. A bass will easily be able to set the hook on themselves when they explode onto the lure. Using live bait in small lakes is of course productive, but with a small boat you can get out into deeper water and fish directly above the fish. When you cast from shore you often can't control the depth you want to fish, and the deeper water is where all the fish tend to hold, especially in the hot summer months.