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Life abounds amid death and destruction; a little macabre for a fishing story, perhaps, but that’s an accurate description of a laydown. A tree dies, suffers a lightning strike or loses its rooting to bank erosion and splash — new bass habitat.
Opportunity levels vary, and one of the most important decisions an angler must make is that of time investment. Do you burn the bank, give each structure a couple of shots and move on; or do you take a more methodical approach and pick apart each laydown with nearly surgical precision?
A lot of that has to do with seasonal patterns, but the laydown itself also helps define the action. To that point, pro angler Randall Tharp looks for what he considers the perfect laydown and notes that he’ll dial in his focus on such a spot, regardless of what the calendar says.