by Bruce Middleton, October 18, 2005
If you know where the bass are you will catch more of them…
When it comes to bass fishing knowing the seasonal movements, their food preferences and where they station themselves to catch the food they eat will greatly improve the numbers of bass you catch. Now this all sound very easy but believe me it take a lot of learning, good electronics and inner eye to be able to visualize what the bottom of the lake looks like at different times of the year.
During spawn, of course, the bass are concentrated in the shallows on their nests, but they are spooky and tough to catch. During the rest of the fishing spring and summer they are more scattered but easier to catch. During the fall and early winter, again they are schooled up and this is again one of the easiest times of the year to catch them if you know where to look. So the big question is, where do the bass hide and how do you find them. We all know about boat docks and brush piles and even windfalls. These are obvious places to find a few bass and always worth throwing a lure into. But these are not always the best places to find numbers of bass or even the biggest bass in any given lake. In most cases, the very best place to look is or around in big weed beds.
Big weed beds are usually on large flats that range in size from hundreds of square feet to acres. They range in depth from 3 to 20 feet with the mean depth of 8 to 15 feet. With this much area to cover you would think that it would be quite intimidating but after years of fishing them you will soon discover that you don’t really fish the whole thing. What you do is let the bass tell you what they want and then fish for them in the areas that have the most promise.
Now this may sound a little confusing so I’ll break it down for you. First of all no flat is completely flat and no flat is covered by one type of vegetation. So what you look for first is changes in the pattern of the vegetation on the flat itself. Look for the edges along the deep edge and the shallow edge of a flat where the weeds end. Along these edges will be a meandering line with indents, points, channels and bays where bass will setup ambush points and wait for baitfish to come by. Also there will be changes in vegetation from one type to another. This is another edge and bass will setup again in ambush points along it. There will hard bottom spots where vegetation won’t grow or a rocky area that will congregate bass along the edges. There are many different things that will make and edge underwater that the bass will use as ambush points. And there will be places of little change where you will find very few bass. But if you look hard enough at these particular places you will find some feature that draws the bass to it.
We all know that bass have three separate activity stages, active, neutral and inactive. Active bass will normally be near the surface looking for a meal. Neutral bass will be mid water column and inactive bass will be down on the bottom. In a weed bed the active bass will be right up near the tops of the weeds scouting around for food and aggressively hunting. Neutral bass will be half way down in the weeds, usually at the bottom of open pockets in the weeds where they still have a view of what is above them while the inactive bass will be buried deep in the weeds.
The two of the most successful ways to go about catching bass in weed beds is with crank baits and plastics, although a spinner bait can be used in place of the crank bait with good success. A crank bait like a Wiggle wart worked just over the tops of the weeds is an ideal way to get the attention of active bass. Worked down a little deeper so it runs into the tops of the weed is even better. When ever the weeds catch on the lure you give the rod a quick snap to clean it off and keep right on fishing. A pause every now and then helps too. This sudden change in motion triggers more strikes than can be counted. It is one of the reasons erratic retrieves work so well.
Plastics are a favorite of many fishermen in this situation because it works on both active and neutral bass. Short casts are the order of the day here. A Texas rig is a must and a constant motion up and down also helps the bait from going too deep. The idea is to let the bait sink into the weeds but then to bring back out and move it a short ways and let it sink again. You can see a lightweight is especially useful in this situation for a slow as possible fall. Also too when a bass is caught on a crank bait toss the plastic right into the area the bass was taken in and work it well. This is to ensure that if more than one bass was in the area that you are able to get him too. Never let an opportunity slip by to take a bass. The same applies for the crank bait. If a bass is taken on plastic, immediately cast the crank bait over the area the bass was caught at and work the area well.
You have to have a good minds eye to be able to visualize what the bottom looks like underwater. Follow you electronics closely and drop a marker over any bottom feature that has promise and don’t be afraid to use an anchor to hold yourself in place. It is much better than running the trolling motor all the time, as it won’t scare all the bass in the area. If you fish finder has a power level switch, turn it to the lowest setting too or turn it off if you stay in one area for an extended period of time. This too scares off bass if left on too long.
Grass flats can and will hold up to 80% of a lakes bass. This leave 20% for the docks and bush piles, windfalls, rock piles and other places, and that’s not much. Flats are the best places to fish for bass with out a doubt. Find the flats and you will find the bass. But flats are touch to fish and you have to do your homework with flats. You have to cruise over them and make a good map of them noting all the good places bass are likely to congregate, and the place they are likely to avoid. Then fish for the active bass. Start with top water lures in the morning and then shallow diver, working ever deeper until you simply can’t keep them clean. Throw a plastic to go after active and inactive bass and as a follow up lure for any strike with the crank bait.
Remember too that during cold fronts and after a cold front has just past, the bass will be buried up and tight to cover. Again the weed flats are the perfect place to fish for these types of bass. Plastics around irregular features will get you more bass than chunking anything around a dock ever will.
Bass move into the flats just before the spawn. They feed in the shallows and move back into the flats for comfort and safety. The flats are where 80% of the bass live out their lives. It makes perfect sense that the flats are where you would go to catch them before and after the spawn. The only time you don’t fish the flats is during deep winter. The seasonal movements of bass say they go too deeper. But don’t be too sure of that one. They may move out of the flats while the vegetation dies, which eats up almost all the oxygen in the area but when that’s done, a lot of bass move back for the winter. Channels, holes, pockets, stumps and other features at 15 feet and deeper will hold a bass year round.
In the summer look also for places where the tops of the weeds drop suddenly to a depth of three or four feet for long runs. These are natural highways for fish to move in and natural ambush points for bass.
Weed beds produce oxygen and lots of it through a process we call photosynthesis. Sunlight is changed into chemicals the plants use as food and oxygen is expelled as a by-product. All plants do this during the day. So green vegetation is a great place to find fish and bass because it has the highest concentration of dissolved oxygen that bass need to survive and be comfortable in. Oxygen supports the whole food chain from algae to the top predators.
Weed beds produce oxygen during the day and more of it during sunny days but they lose a lot of it at night. For this reason bass move out of the weed beds at night and then move back in an hour or two after sun up when the oxygen levels rise. Does this suggest a pattern to you? It should, because this is how you should fish a weed bed. You fish the edges at dawn and moving into the weed bed as the day goes on.
When fishing the edges first thing in the morning it’s best to start out with top water lures and then switch to lipless crank baits as the sun comes up. This will give you the best chance of catching the most bass before they move into the weeds. After they are in the weeds then shallow cranks and plastics are the way to go as discussed earlier.
When you are fishing in the weeds and using a plastic bait the most important thing to remember is to stay in constant contact with the bait at all times. You have to feel everything that is going on with the bait and feel every thing that is on the bottom at all times.
When setting the hook on a bass when fishing with a plastic bait, when you feel the slightest tap, reel in all the slack in the line until the rod is pointing down at the line. Put a slight amount of pressure on the bait so you are extra sure of any tap or bump of the bait. As soon as you feel the bass again, set the hook with a sharp upward snap of the rod. This does several things. It keeps the bass from swimming off with the bait so he doesn’t go back into cover where he may tangle you up and you end up loosing him. It keeps the bass from swallowing the bait and it lifts the bass out of the area quickly so as not to disturb any other bass in the area that you may be able to catch on successive casts.
And don’t forget to use scent on your plastic baits. This is an important aspect or component this rig. Scent is a must on any lure or bait.
Weed fishing requires strong line in the range of 17 to 30 pounds depending on the lure, rig and how you’re fishing it. Plastics fishing require a 20 to 30 pound main line with a 17 to 25 pound fluorocarbon leader. Crank baits can get away with a 17 pound line but if your using a lipless crank bait I would bump that up to 20 to 24 pound line because of all the quick snaps requires to clean the line of weeds. This is something that you are going to be doing a lot of and is some cases, the weeds will win and you’re going to have to horse the lure free. This type of heavy abuse will take a heavy line and 17-pound line just won’t take it hour after hour. You’re going to lose lures if you use it.
Remember that with crank baits the idea is to make contact with the vegetation in order to improve your strike percentage by 75%. Don’t wimp out on the line.
During the fall months as the vegetation begins to die off the bass will move just outside the grass line, especially from dusk until after dawn. This is the period of least oxygen in the grass beds at this time of year. The bass will however move back in and hunt the edges and other likely places during the full of the day. This will continue until the weeds are completely gone in late fall to early winter.
After the weeds are gone or in the late stages of dying the bass will move to places where they feel are the most comfortable. It is a fact that a bass will forego good hunting grounds in the fall and winter for a home range that is the most comfortable to him. Since a bass can roam for food, this is no problem. Fall places to look for bass are creek and river inlets to a lake and deep water. This holds true because the temperature fluxuations of a creek or river is less that of the lake and they’re for more even and comfortable for the bass. Bass may even swim up the creek for some distance. Deeper water near structure and by structure I mean vertical structure. These are places a bass can move up and down in the water column but only may have to move a foot or so to stay in contact with the bottom. An underwater cliff or steep bank is perfect example of this type of structure.
Fall bass suspend. This means you need a good map of the lake and the contours of the bottom so you can divine out which may be the best areas to start to look for bass. Most bass will spend just off piece of structure at the same level as the top of the level of that nearby structure. This means that if there is a point or a hump who’s top is in 15 feet of water it is most likely that the bass in the area will suspend at 15 feet. This is a key factor to remember. Knowing how deep the bass are is the first key to catching them. This takes good electronics and a constant eye on them as there is usually no telling for sure which direction from the hump or point the bass will choose to suspend at. They will still make forage runs into any place that has vegetation left in the fall but they live there anymore. There is just too little oxygen for them and the water is colder than they like. Bass are schooled up at this time of year and if you find one bass the likely hood that repeated casts will catch more bass is very high indeed.
Now this is not to say that shallow brush piles and docks don’t hold any bass at all, they do, but not in the number that are present in the spring and summer. Being territorial a bass may stay under a good dock year round if it has everything the bass wants. This is especially true in shallow lakes, say one where the deepest part of the lake is 15 feet. In this type of lake it is also common for bass to suspend in the nearest deep water to grass beds and lily pad fields because this is where the first green vegetation in spring appears.
The best possible thing any bass angler can do for him/herself is construct a good map of the lakes he or she fishes and put in as much detail as possible. First you draw a good resemblance of the shoreline of the lake and mark windfalls, brush piles, docks and the like. Here your trying to mark likely places to fish near the shoreline. Next, drive around the lake and identify any lily pad areas, grass beds, rock outcroppings or any other likely vegetation habitat that bass use for feeding and cover. Lastly, drive around the lake with your electronics on and dissect the lake into grids and identify points, deep spots, humps, creek channels, stump fields and any other rise or dip on the lake floor of over 3 to 5 feet depending on how accurate your gear is.
With this map you can now see exactly where the bass are likely to be during any given season of the year. It also gives you the added edge of knowing about humps or channels that others don’t know about off shore that get very little fishing pressure and therefore product great numbers and quality bass for you. Yes you do have to invest a little time and effort into the map but the dividends it pays you in the end will more than make up for the hour or two it took you to make it.
Example; it’s late fall and no one is having much luck on a normally good lake. You arrive on the scene armed with your map. Motor over to a hump out by some deep water and see a school of bass suspended 10 yards just north of it and they are in 18 feet of water. You tie on a spinner bait or a suspending deep diving Bomber Long A crank bait and start working the bass. After catching a few you switch to a Senko worm with 1/16 ounces of weight and catch a few more before the bite falls off. You then move to the creek inlet where the water is slightly warmer and clearer and follow the channel until you find another school of bass. By days end you’ve caught a dozen or more bass and everyone else has gone home skunked. And everyone wants to know how you do time after time and just smile and say "oh I just got lucky" or " You have to hold your mouth just right. You know the old lines.
Lunar tables are another over looked resource that many angles don’t believe in or don’t know about. But it is a proven fact that more and bigger bass, or for that matter any fish species, are caught three days before and after a full or new moon. This chart also gives you the best times of the day to fish. And they are very accurate. Even professionals use this moon phase chart because they really work. Don’t be skeptical go to www. Moonphase.com and give it a try a few times. I think you too will be impressed with the results, especially around the new and full moon periods. Look, it can’t hurt and any edge is and edge, so why not give it a shot.
When studied carefully, the movements of a bass and its actions can become predictable. Food availability is a bass’s number one priority, water temperature, oxygen levels and other factors come second. From this we can see that a bass will station itself where food will found and only move from that spot when conditions force it to.
Now at this point I’m going to give you all a little lecture because I think a lot of you need it. I see this so often and it’s time to stop. I see it on the lakes and I see it in the stores and it has to stop.
Bass fishing is a very dynamic sport, it changes all the time. We see with our eyes, what looks to be a great place that may hold a bass and we cast to with whatever lure we have tied on at that moment, say a shallow crank bait, and we catch a huge bass with it. What we don’t recognize is that we could have caught that same bass on a spinner bait or a buzz bait. We get so wrapped up with this new magic lure that caught us this huge bass that we rush down to the tackle store and buy more of them. What really caught the bass was your presentation of the lure but we fail to give ourselves the credit we deserve for tying the lure on and fishing it correctly. It has to be the lure. No it doesn’t, it’s the angler that catches the bass. Don’t ever think of any one bait or lure as magic or special, its not. All it is, is the fact that you are familiar with the lure and you know how to use it correctly. You presented it the way the bass wanted it and now all you have to do is to duplicate that last cast to catch more. This magic lure syndrome is a falsehood, a myth. Don’t believe it for an instant. Stand up and take credit where credit is due. Take a little pride in a job well done and don’t give it to some inanimate object that you tied on and controlled and caught a bass with.
