Profiling Bass In Lakes - Mid-Summer
By Adam JohnsonWow, my e-mail tells me you really appreciate the information I'm giving you regarding finding fish. As I stated earlier, there's a lot of information out there on how to catch fish, but very little on how to find them. When you think about it, finding fish is the most important aspect of fishing. If you don't find them, you can pull every trick out of the book and never get a bite. Find them and you will catch them.
I fish for largemouth bass all over the country in lakes, rivers and reservoirs. You all hear the old saying, "A bass is a bass no matter where you find them," which basically is saying that whether you're on a natural lake in the northern United States or a man-made lake in the south, all bass act alike. I maintain that the body of water does have a lot to do with where you will find bass because of the nature of the structure, the forage base, recreational and fishing pressure, maximum and average depths, and the lack-of or abundance of vegetation. So, a bass is a bass, when it comes to catching them. Think specifics when it comes to the body of water you're trying to find them on.
It's time for an example to illustrate my point. It's mid-August Dog Days and I'm on a lake in east-central Iowa. The maximum depth is 60 feet and there is very little vegetation due to the grass carp there. Man-made structure is prevalent in the lake in depths from 15 to 30 feet. There is a protected slot limit on this lake so there are lots of 14 to 20 inch bass.
The forage base is well developed consisting of shiners, shad, and little bluegills. The surface water temperature in the shallow back bays is very warm, pushing 80 degrees on the average. Water visibility is limited due to the algae and the bite has been tough from the information gleaned from the local anglers.
This scenario is common all over the country at given times of the year. How do we find those bass? And once we do, how do we catch them?
Since the bays are carrying very warm water with marginal oxygen concentrations I'm going to put all of my efforts on points and mid-lake structure in the main basin. Bass will move shallower at night to feed but during sunup I'm going to work the deep edges on the rock and rubble and right over the tops of that deep man-made structure.
The problem with man-made structure is these are community spots that get pounded hard by anglers so any fish that are on this cover are well-conditioned and require a spot-on presentation. During a tough bite your odds go up when you locate a school of bass that haven't been harassed on a daily basis.
Largemouth bass do school and can be in tight pods in the heat of summer. When these groups of bass are in deeper water on structure they can be pinpointed with a sonar. This is why I start out my search on a point, hump or a piece of man-made structure by using a faster approach to strain water quickly. As I move along the structure I'm either going to spot a school on the sonar or catch one with the lure I'm using.
Now I've ruled out the bays and backwaters and shallow stump fields and any marginal shallow vegetation. I've ruled in deeper mid-lake structure which I cast around with a deep-diving crankbait.
You can almost always get one bass in a school to react to a fast moving crankbait. After that, you may need some finesse to generate more bites. For this I use a plastic worm.
With a plastic worm during tough conditions you can get those bass to bite by keeping the bait in front of them for a while. Don't be in a hurry with the retrieve. Let the worm sink to bottom and sit there. Twitch it a few times before hopping it a little. Your retrieve should be painstakingly slow. Bass will react to something that looks edible twitching on the bottom.
When you catch a bass under these conditions work that exact spot for more. I often toss out a marker buoy or punch in the spot on my GPS. I have been in situations that resemble this scenario all over the country and on some of my better days I have caught 25 to 30 bass off a spot no bigger than 25 yards square. It's amazing how many anglers are programmed to keep on moving after they caught a fish. It's a bad move under these conditions.
This pattern holds up for those hot-weather mid-summer months and then once the cool nights begin to drop the surface temps and turn the leaves from green to gold you can go shallow again. For now think deep, think mid-lake or main-basin structure and when you find fish sit tight. There are bass biting, you just need to find them.
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