One Simple Rule for
Late Summer Bass… The secret: Think ‘deep weedlines’
By Jerry Curtis
We all know the basics of late summer
fishing: Get out early before the recreational traffic, avoid
making loud noises, use finesse lures, blah blah blah….
What about working man who knows the
circumstances aren’t perfect, but can’t help it? He has one
three-hour period per week to fish, and the good Lord has dealt
him a tough hand. It’s 90 degrees and he’s fishing dead calm water
at noon on an sunny August Saturday. Jet skiers are wave skipping
behind his outboard’s wake, and a pontoon full of unsupervised,
obnoxious kids keep following him around and yelling, “Are you
catching anything?!”
The above scenario notwithstanding, you
have a couple of other factors working against you in late July
and early August. First, the spawn ended more than a month ago
(even during this cold, crazy summer), and that post-spawn feeding
period has waned. Second, baitfish are everywhere. This isn’t
cold, void, unproductive opener water. Small panfish and other
baitfish have been proliferating for months and provide a steady,
natural food source for predators like bass.
But you also have a couple factors
working for you. First, while less active than they were a month
ago, or will be in the early autumn, bass are nonetheless still
feeding in late summer. Second, the fish may be more concentrated
now than at any other time during the open water season. Third,
because of the sometimes daunting conditions of dog days fishing
(reread second paragraph if you need a reminder) bass see less
fishing pressure late in the summer than in June or early July.
For the above reasons, late summer bass
fishing usually shakes out as either really poor or really
excellent. Here’s my recipe for ensuring the latter.
We can sum up location with one spot:
deep water weedlines over hard bottoms. Using your electronics,
work that outside weed edge, which typically sets anywhere from 12
to 20 feet.
Start with crankbaits as a search tool,
or if there are two guys in the boat, have one person work a
spinnerbait, just to mix things up. Use natural-colored cranks
(remember all those new baitfish?) in perch, shad, or crawdad
colors first. Sometimes it takes a pass or two to learn the lay of
the weedline. Watch the depthfinder to keep the boat just off edge
of heavy the weeds so you’re not wasting time clearing lures. That
said, if you’re pulling coontail off your lures, you’re in the
right place. Bass love the stuff.
Once you’ve nailed down the weedline
location, Rapala’s DT series works well. It gets down fast and
covers a lot of water in the strike zone. Work those heavy
spinnerbaits the same way, a technique bass geeks call “slow
rolling.” After your cast, let it settle to the bottom, give it a
quick pump to activate the blades, then reel it in real slow. Like
that diving Rapala, you’re keeping it in the strike zone longer.
Thoroughly fish weed points, rocky
points, rock piles, and any hard bottom areas. Baitfish will key
on these areas, and so will the bass. Watch the surface. If you
see panfish or other baitfish breaking the surface, there’s a good
chance a school of largemouth are chowing down underneath.
That’s a key word here: school. Bass
actually school up and concentrate off these deep weedlines in
late summer. If you find one, you’ll usually find a whole pod.
After two or three strikes or releases on my search baits, I’ve
found the school and will begin altering tactics.
I’ll switch to jig and pig, or a jig
and plastic. Employ a skirted jig with a weedguard, and tip it
with something tasty, like a plastic trailer or Gene Larew salt
craw or a Berkley power craw. Go ahead and Texas rig if you
prefer, say with a 7-inch turtleback worm on a 1/8- to 3/8-inch
jig.
When you discover a good school of
bass, you can create an almost frenzied feeding (and thus fish
catching) scenario. Multiple strikes and hooked hawgs roaring to
and from the boat starts stirs up the baitfish, which in turn
whips up the other bass. Within seconds, you’ll have the same
wild-eyed grimace when you’re connecting with fish every other
cast. Come September, fish will slip back into a more consistent,
three-day feeding pattern. Until then, lunker bass every other
cast will have to suffice. Not bad for “dog days fishing,” huh?
Jerry Curtis is a bass tournament
angler and the 2001 winner of the Minnesota Pro/Am Bass Tour.
