by Bruce Middleton, September 17, 2007

Warm weather and predictable bass make for easy fishing…

I love bass fishing in the summer. I usually start out the morning wearing a light jacket and a shirt but as the morning progresses I soon shed the jacket and then the shirt and end up fishing with just a Tee shirt on. And by 10:00 or so I am searching in the ice chest for something cold to drink because it is that warm out.

This is the time of year I love the best for bass fishing. Now it is by no means as exciting as seeing a mile long shoreline filled with bedding bass you can see and pitch a crawfish or worm to and it is not as hopeful as the cold water turnover when the bass are schooled up and suspended out in the lake just off of the flats waiting for their time to rush into the flats and gorge themselves on anything that moves. No, summer time is the most predictable time to fish for bass as they have settled down into their summer homes and ambush points and are calmly waiting for dinner to pass by.

This is the time of year those bass that make their homes under docks are found there, and those bass that make their homes in the weed beds are on the outside or inside edges or they are along the open lanes of the weeds. Those bass that live in the lily pads are snuggled in for the long hot spells and the roamers, well they just go where ever they feel like it I guess, usually to some sort of covers they roam between when they hunt. But the main thing I really like about summer is that while the bass are still wily, they are not as spooky as they are at other times of the year. They will investigate an offering instead of just running away or ignoring it and that means you have a good chance of catching them.

I have kept a log of all the fishing I have done over the years and I have put down such information as what lakes I have fished, the fish I caught and when I fished them, the weather, the lure I used and a whole lot more. What really amazed me when I looked at it on a spreadsheet looking for different correlations was I found the best fishing I had was during the summer months. It also showed I did the most fishing in the prespawn and spawn time periods. And I did the least amount of fishing in the fall. My biggest bass ever came on the 15 of Aug., which is right in the middle of summer if you say July, Aug., and Sept. are our hot summer months.

Summer bass fishing is basic bass fishing. That is to say that you don’t have to get fancy with different rigs in order to catch bass because of all the cold fronts that move in and out of the area like during the spring and fall. For weeds, a frog worked along the weed lines and lily pads is the number one tool for taking bass in the summer. A buzz bait is number two and a spinner bait is number three. For dock fishing just about nothing is better than a black and blue jig with a black and blue worm or other similar colored trailer. A short 4-inch Senko™ black worm is number two and a cotton candy tube is number three.

For fishing between docks and more open spaces like over the top of cover, nothing beats the Rapala original floating minnow in silver in size F11. The number two choice is a Bumble Bug™ (remember to change the back hook out for a #4 sized treble) and a lipless crank bait rounds out the number three position. Now top water plugs, chuggers, spitters and stick baits along with buzz baits are good anytime of the day but are especially good during low light periods like dawn and dusk. These lures just seem to account for a large portion of bass caught on any lake and large bass at that. Now if you don’t know where the bass are and are searching for them then search lures like lipless crank baits, regular crank baits, spinner baits and jerk baits both hard and soft are the way to go. And if you find bass deep then plastics and jigs along with deep suspending crank baits are the way to go. But for the most part a jig and or a worm, a top water lure, a spinner bait, a frog, a lipless crank bait, a suspending crank bait and a floating minnow are the basic lures you need to cover 80% of the fishing done at this time of year.

This is also one of the best times to take the kids out fishing or the grand kids whatever the case may be. You can teach them the ins and outs of bass fishing, the ways to use all the lures and baits, the different rods and reels and not worry about if they are too cold or uncomfortable. But be sure to apply liberal amounts of sunscreen to yourself and the kids. Later in life the chances of developing Melanoma or skin cancer is a real threat. Make sure you cover your ears too, I know, I had apiece of my left ear removed a few years ago and that is no fun at all.

Now really small kids require just catching and you have to find a lake full of sunfish or perch that will bite every 30 seconds or so or the little kids will loose interest and then you run the risk of loosing them as a fishing partner in the future. But when they get older and can go an hour or better without a bite then they are ready for bass fishing. I have found too that if you hook a bass it is best to hand them the pole and let them reel in the bass so they know the excitement of reeling in a big one.

Summertime is also a great time to take friends out too. Now while I do a lot of fishing alone, I find that having a partner in the boat makes for a happy fishing trip all around. It gives you someone to talk to and someone to teach or to learn from. Either way you learn something new and that is what counts. I love to learn something new every day. It is what makes life interesting.

Summer is the time when bass fishing is probably the most predictable. Now we do have cold fronts that move in every now and then but for the most part this is our dry season and the weather stays the same for long periods of time. These periods make the bass pretty much stationary and therefore easier to find and cast to. Using the right lure and presentation is the key element to catching them as it has always been. But with the sun out most of the time, shady areas are the most common places to find them as well as buried in deep weeds and under lily pads and under docks or other cover whether that is in shallow or deep water.

As I have stated before, there are four kinds of bass behaviors: those bass that go to shallow homes, those bass that go to deep homes, those bass that are loners and those bass that roam. Bass are about a pound or so when they make this transition or about 3 or 4 years old and no one knows why or which one they will choose but they do make this choice. They also stick together in age groups and are seldom mixed with other age groups. Some are loners from the start but all are loners by the time they are 4 or 5 pounds.

Summer time fishing is a time to sit back and study the lakes you fish in. Since you aren’t trying to stay warm the whole day you actually have the time to look at the water you are fishing in. It is a great time to really look at the water and see just how far down you can see under the surface. If you can see details down to 15 feet or more then this is a very clear lake. If you can only see down to 8 to 10 feet then this is a dingy lake and if you can see only 5 feet or less then this is really dirty water. This sets the stage for the type and color or lures you are going to use on this lake now and in the future.

Now in clear water you are forced to make long casts and use lures with a lot of flash because the bass can see you from quite a distance. It also means that you will be using translucent colors on spinner bait trailers, on plastics for the bottom and for hard and soft jerk baits and crank baits when working mid column or near the surface. Jigs still remain the same as do top water plugs but buzz baits and spinner baits should be soft natural fish colors on the blades and skirts.

In dingy water the regular recommended lures work just fine along with any of your favorite best old never fail ones. But in dirty water it is best to use bright colors and bold patterns. Rattles are all but a must have in this environment too. You have to make several casts to the same area so the bass have a chance to locate and move into the area so they can have a chance to strike your lure or bait. Also in really dirty water bass will be is much shallower water than normal. Bass don’t really care for this type of water and they will move to very shallow water to find the clearest water they can. Top water lures are especially good in this type of situation and can be fished all day long with great success.

Now most of this you know and really this is just a reminder of things that you should already understand. It is like saying that you should use invisible line in clear water. Well duh, you know that. It’s so the bass don’t see the line. In dirty water it doesn’t matter.

But summer time brings with it some inherent problems that we all have to contend with. Mainly power boats and water skiers on the water every day of the week. There is no more taking a Wednesday off to go fishing and have the lake all to yourself. Summer is vacation time and every lake has vacation houses on it and most have powerboats to go skiing with. And between the noise and the waves, it can make fishing some lakes just plain miserable. The only good thing to come out of all of that is that it puts a chop on the water and that does improve the fishing a bit. But on a lake that has a lot of vegetation in it, these powerboats chop up the greenery into fine pieces until you get to the point where you can’t cast a treble hooked lure and retrieve it without catching some of that vegetation on one of your hooks. This leaves you with no choice but to fish with single hook only rigs. And this is very limiting indeed.

You can always get up before daylight and hit the lakes before it gets too light out. This is the best time to fish anyway. This will give you quite a few hours of uninterrupted peaceful fishing before the powerboats fire up. Also it’s wise to start on the north or south end of the lake and work towards the east side so when the sun does come up, you are on the shaded part of the lake and therefore still in the lowest light part of the lake.
Now a lot of us swarm to lakes that have a ‘no gas motor rule’ in effect but that is a short lived place to fish as all too soon the pressure of so many anglers on these smaller lakes causes the bass to head for deep water and start to feed only at night. So what is left to us? Well you could try night fishing, which I highly recommend. Not only are you alone on the lake but it the time when the biggest bass come out to feed. And these big bass don’t just feed, they gorge themselves until they can’t hold anything else and an eight-pound bass can take in a lot of food. I have written a story about my experiences night fishing and will publish it later this year for you to read. But I will say this, the fishing was great!

Another choice would be to find those smaller lakes and Beaver ponds that no one ever fishes. These can be real gold mines of bass fishing fun. You can catch 40 bass in a day although the biggest may only be a pound and a quarter. But then again where can you say you when fishing and caught 40 bass in one day. Again I have written a story about these small waters and Bob Johansen has already written one on this site that you need to read. Mine will be out later.

Another thing about summer fishing is the fact that bass can actually take in less food than the 3% of their body weight they normally need daily to sustain their health and growth. They do this by just staying still a lot and suspending in cover. This conservation of energy is well understood by Biologists who study bass. When the water gets over 71 degrees, bass act just like us, they find shade and don’t move around much until it cools down. Their appetite is reduced somewhat and they take in less food than in the spring or fall but much more than in the winter months. This does make them a little more inactive than normal but not by much up here in the North Country. But you need to know and understand this behavior.

In summer we seldom have to down size our presentations because the bass are all inactive. But using smaller lures and baits is always an option to you. While using big lures to catch big bass is often used, the use of small lures will get you a lot more strikes including the big bass. I prefer to use in-between sized lures in the summer. Not big ones and not down sized ones either. I try to find a compromise somewhere in the middle that will get me a lot of strikes while still appealing to the smaller bass and the bigger ones too. Bob Johansen (see his featured writers column on this site) fishing Horse Shoe Lake with me one day caught a 3 ½-inch bass on a 5 3/8-inch minnow lure. Now Bob said that that bass would probably be killed by a bigger fish because it would get itself in trouble picking on bigger fish like that. I said to him that I wanted to see that bass in about 5 years, because if it was that aggressive at that size, imagine how it would fight at 4 or 5 pounds. We both agreed on that one.

Well there you go, summer fishing in a few paragraphs. Use normal lures and don’t go to length using special rigs. Stick with the basics and you will do just fine, don’t forget to take a friend or the neighbor out and take the time to study the water. Enjoy the summer and remember to take the kids out fishing too.

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