It Gets Tough In The Summer
Some of our readers have written in telling us about how incredibly hot it has gotten in their area lately and this has shut down the bass. One gentlemen in particular has asked if there is anything that he can do differently to wake em’ up.
I gotta tell you that we have the same problem here in So-Cal. It’s as though we skipped spring and went from cold, wet days immediately into very hot, clear days. When this happens there are a few things that I have found that generally speaking, will put some fish on your thumb.
Now is the time to change lures. Although there will always be some fish shallow, they can be the most difficult to catch. I prefer to concentrate my efforts a bit deeper for the time being, with certain structural elements being what I like to key on.
Make The Early Morning Bite A Priority
Usually, if I am fishing in the early morning, I will throw top-water lures but always have a back up ready to go. I like to have a swim-bait waiting in the wings for when a fish misses the plug. I immediately cast back in the same spot and have found that this will often get a strike from a fish that missed.
As the day wears on, I like to use a football head jig with a craw trailer on hard bottom as well as a swim jig for probing deep channel breaks and creek beds. When I’m using the swim-jig, I prefer the rear end of a paddle tail swim-bait that has had the head destroyed as a trailer. I believe that this complements the natural action of the jig very well and presents a substantial enough profile to interest bass. It’s also a good way to cover water and explore different depths efficiently. You can use this lure to fish uphill, downhill, vertically or horizontally making it very versatile for locating active fish.
Targeting The Suspended Fish In Mid-Day
When the sun gets high fish will often suspend and this is when it can get really tricky to catch em’. This is when the use of unweighted soft plastics can be a boon to you. Because they tend to sink fairly slowly through the water column, they will stay in the fishes face a little longer. There are three classes of baits that I use regularly for this application.
One is the soft plastic jerk bait. These minnow imitating lures come in a variety of sizes and colors that closely resemble most prey fish. They can be fished fast, slow, dead-sticked, weighted or weightless. More often than not, I will cast it out weightless and let it fall on semi-slack line so that the lure is sinking horizontally. I like to let it hit bottom or the tops of weeds and then give it a quick pop and let it fall again. Most of the strikes come on the initial or second fall.
Next is the Senko style worm. Again, I prefer to fish this without a weight and will use it worm rigged or wacky rigged. In both cases,
Senko Worms
allowing it to fall horizontally is the key. I have seen a lot of guys engage their reel as soon as the bait hits the water which results in the lure swinging as opposed to falling. Try to think in terms of if some critter fell out of a tree and hit the water. Would it sink straight down or swing? I believe it would be the former and it just seems a more natural presentation this way. I know that once I learned to allow the bait to fall straight, I started getting more strikes.
And finally is creature bait. I know that most folks weight these without thinking about it but I’m here to tell you, these little guys can and will catch fish without any weight added to them. Fish them by allowing the lure to fall to the bottom and then use a short sweeping motion to get them up and moving horizontally. Just remember to go slow.
Most of my strikes when using a creature in the summer months have come just as I started to move it the second time. It’s as though the fish will be looking at the bait as it falls and then once it jumps up and back, it convinces them that this thing’s alive and an easy meal so they might as well eat it since they have nothing better to do.
This short list is not the end all of summer fishing by any means but it is a good starting point and usually produces fairly well for me. I hope that this helps …
See ya’ on the water …