Where There is no Cover
By Adam JohnsonI would be the first to admit that bass love cover. Boat docks, tree stumps, big mats of milfoil or hydrilla, and in many reservoirs there is that man-made cover that consists of sunken trees and other debris. Cover like this not only offers a sanctuary for bass, but it's where forage accumulates and creates a fine spot to feed.
While a great majority of bass anglers plot their game plans around the cover where bass are likely to hide, there is an elite few that realize there is an untapped resource; that being the open-water bass. These fish are not overly conditioned to the standard lure presentations and generally tend to be bigger fish.
The reason many anglers don't target bass that are not cover oriented is because they don't understand how to find these fish. Most anglers find it easier to key on something visible on the surface or submerged cover on their sonar because they are confident that bass will be there.
Another reason that many bass anglers don't choose to search for open-water bass is because they don't have confidence in their ability to interpret their sonars. Since a cover-oriented angler just uses his sonar to read depths and locate weedlines when it comes time to decipher a bottom transition or locate a thermocline, it creates too many questions in the angler's mind.
There are tricks to finding open-water bass. The number one rule is to look for any bottom irregularity. If the bottom changes from sand to cobblestone you have a spot where bass will congregate. If you discover a spot where muck changes to rock, you're in great territory. Dips in the bottom are perfect places to find bass that don't relate to cover. Rises in the bottom where an old road bed was, or where an old rowboat sank and is covered in silt. These spots will hold bass.
Finding these spots requires an angler to put down the rod for a while and do some motoring around with one eye glued to the sonar. The best way to strain a patch of bottom is to break the body of water up into small segments and search an area that's a few hundreds square yards. Sometimes you work back and forth over a section of deep open water and find nothing that will hold fish. Sometimes you find the mother lode.
I find the GPS works magic when straining cover-free water. You can plot your path so you don't cover water twice and when you do discover a school of bass on a road bed, or in a dip, or at the base of a dropoff you can mark the spot with an icon or set up a waypoint and find that exact spot again.
Bass do suspend. These fish are generally relating to a school of forage, but not always. Sometimes they're just hanging over the top of the thermocline and when hunger triggers their desire to move into an area to forage they will meander into the shallows to search out something to eat. It's usually a stroke of luck that allows us to find these bass. We're motoring to a spot to check out and the sonar locates a school of suspended fish. If your sonar shows bigger fish near a busted up school of forage, you have realized a stroke of luck. Get a crankbait into these bass. You can even catch suspended fish that aren't actively feeding. Show them a fast moving deep-diving rattling crankbait and you will trigger a bite.
I love to fish shallow cover. It's my favorite way to catch bass. But when the shallows are quiet, sometimes those open-water bass become my best option.
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