by Bruce Middleton, February 02, 2009

Find baitfish and the bass will be nearby…

The favorite meal of Large Mouth Black Bass is Sushi and this comes in the form of baitfish. Whether that is a Shad, Blue Gill, Crappie, Perch, Shiner, baby Bass, trout or any other small minnow, it doesn’t matter. For a bass to grow normally it needs to eat about 3% of its body weight every day. But up here in Washington State we are limited to Sunfish, Perch, Blue Gill, Sculpins, Rock Bass and Crappie for the most part but a few of the large predator species fry are also fed upon when they are small enough to swallow, so you can add in Bass, Walleye, Salmon, Carp, Trout and others. What does matter is that these small bait fish school for protection against predators and/or hide in the shallows in the weeds. There is safety in numbers. Baitfish live on plankton, surface algae, plant algae, insects, aquatic bugs and small crustaceans that live in the freshwater environment they inhabit whether that is in a river or a lake. Wind and current move some of these resources like surface plankton, around the body of water, forcing the open water baitfish to move with it in order to feed. Most all the time these baitfish are suspended near the surface, close to their food. Surrounding these fish and below them are the predators, the bass. The higher the concentration of baitfish, the more bass they will attract. They too prefer to be near their food source. They lie in ambush in shaded areas out of view waiting for a baitfish to wander outside the group or near them. Any baitfish that is unaware of its surroundings or wanders off is instantly claimed as a meal. A bass’s tail is disproportionately larger than the body of the fish. This is for making very fast sprints to catch prey.

A bass uses the eyes of a prey fish as the focal point of his attack. Bass will almost always try to eat the prey headfirst so the fins don’t get stuck in his mouth or throat. A lot of the time bass will pick a spot to intercept these schools of baitfish as they move into the shallows to feed if the surface plankton is insufficient to provide for their needs. It usually takes at least 3000 acres of water to produce enough surface plankton for open water baitfish to survive without resorting to moving into the shallows to feed.

In brushy or weedy cover the baitfish will be near the upper limbs of the cover where there is more sunlight for the algae to grow quickly with the bass just below them in most cases. Most all baitfish are not found in deep water as this is a poor environment for their food to grow in. When a bass sees an opportunity to feed he will rise up, gulp his prey and the return to the lower levels. On occasion several bass will rise at the same time and strike. This can spark a feeding frenzy where the baitfish flee to the surface, jumping out of the water. This excites the bass even farther. Bass from all around suddenly attack the bait school from all direction in a mad dash to gorge on as many bait fish as possible in as short a time as possible. This is called a blow-up. This can last from a few second to a minute or more depending on the size of the school and the number of bass gorging themselves.

Most baitfish schools near shore are made up of baitfishes that are less than three-inches long and many schools are made of fingerlings only 3/4s of an inch long. It will take a great many of these fingerlings to fill an eight-pound bass. Really big bass can gulp down fish that are a foot long or better in one big slurp without any problem what so ever. They are only limited by the size of their mouth. Out in more open water the baitfish can grow to be six inches or more. This is where you will find more large bass feeding rather than near shore. These baitfish are more light greenish in color that the shoreline baitfish, after having reached maturity. This is a fact that bears remembering as light green/silver colored lure work well out in open water. Bass also have the ability to change colors to adapt to their surroundings. This accounts for dark bass in shallow water and very light colored bass that come out of deep water.

Probably the most important things you need to know about baitfish is when they spawn and where they go after the spawn as apposed to bass and their yearly movements. This is important to understand so you can predict where the bass will be when these smaller fish spawn and will be. Knowing the habits of these bait fish is just as important as knowing the habits of bass. You need to know where they congregate, what they feed on, where they hide from predators and every thing else about these bait fish. Knowing their habits can aid you in using this information to catch more bass.

An example of this would be a lake that has Sun Fish as the major baitfish in the lake. Sun Fish live in very shallow water so if a bass wants a fish dinner it must go into very shallow water to get one. This helps you choose the color and type of lures and baits to use for catching them.

Water clarity and temperature govern where prey fish and bass are located though out the year. Example: in very muddy water the bass and prey fish will be in very shallow water and in gin clear water they will be generally a lot deeper. That and the seasonal cycles are always moving the fish too.

This is one reason why a depth/fish finder is so important. Finding these scattered schools of baitfish is no easy task, as they could be anywhere and once found, staying near them is an absolute must. You must know exactly the depth at which the school is holding so you can swim your bait or lure threw them. This is the way to land both quality and quantity of bass. Blips off to the side and below the school will generally be bass showing up on the fish finder. It is important not to run the depth finder at full power all the time when fishing the school. The noise of the sonar can disturb the bass and the school. Use it infrequently to insure the placement and depth of the school and that is all. You need to remember too that the sonar ping is reflected off the fish’s swim bladder and not the whole fish. That is a very small target on a ¾ inch baitfish indeed and shows how hard it will be to find this size baitfish. But a big school of them will show up quite easily.

Try using a marker buoy and then fish around it to know where the fish are and where to cast. The same goes for the trolling motor. Use it as little as you can get away with. Over use will scare the school deeper and the bass away. If you have too, use an anchor or wind sock to hold your position. It is far better option than spooking the baitfish and the bass. These tools are not to be over-looked, they are quite useful in many situations and can be a real asset. A marker is real asset at this time too. During the spawning time of the year it is a common practice to use a pole to move the boat around, as this is quieter than running the trolling motor.

This is an ideal situation to use one of the new side scan Sonar’s that have just come on the market. Instead of looking straight down these sonar’s look as far as 80 feet to either side of the boat giving you a huge advantage. You can see so much more that the comparison to a regular sonar just doesn’t exist. But these new sonar’s are new and expensive and right now only pros and the very well off can afford them. But there are several different types of depth finders out on the market today and it will pay you big dividends to find a really good one to use verses a really inexpensive model. Normally you get what you pay for so get the best you can afford.

A color monitor is a real plus in a depth finer. It makes looking for fish easier on the eyes and it makes fine detail stand out a lot better. The new side scan too have a habit of showing you the very best details of the bottom but may fall short of your expectations for showing you fish. I think when the color monitor and side scan are combined it will be a far superior fish finder model to own.

There are a lot of lures that you can use in this situation, which look like a baitfish and have the same action. Crank baits and plastic swim baits are two that readily come to mind. They come in many fish shaped sizes, colors and actions. They dive to just about any depth that you need them to and they look like the real thing.

But there are a lot better alternatives out there especially for brushy and weedy areas. A spinner bait is one, another is a split shot rig using a silver, smoke or white tube. Firstly a split shot rig has a wider choice of colors and shapes of plastics to choose from. You can fish it at any depth and change depth instantly without changing baits. It is rigged weedless, which is a major improvement and it can be fished with or without rattles at the drop of a hat. By keeping the rod tip high or low, will help govern the depth the bait runs at which gives you better control over the bait. You can also drop a tube or other plastic into places you would never drop crank bait, say a brush pile, and pull out bass that the crank bait would never be able to get near. A drop shot rig and doodling are also great methods for using a tube in this type of situation and you should always be at hand and ready to use.

The use of a long seven foot medium heavy rod will allow you to move the bait as much as four feet laterally at the end of a cast and of course, a full fourteen feet near the end of the retrieve. On short casts, this can become very important, the ability to steer the bait into and around obstacles is often very important. This is a huge amount of added control.

The bass are constantly watching the school for stragglers or any fish that gets too far from the pack. When you swim your tube through the school you have two chances for a hook up, just before you get to the school and when you leave the school. This is why it is so important to know the placement and the depth of the baitfish school. You want to go right through the middle of it if you can. This would make your presentation the most natural looking. There is also another point of view that says that you need to use colors that differ from the school of fish. This way your lure stands out and is easy to spot and this makes it easier for the bass to strike. This is worth keeping in mind in case you are fine-tuning a presentation in order to catch the bass in the first place. If you are having no luck using the fish colors of the baitfish, then switch to colors that differ so it sticks out from the crowd.

Now you can start to get a real feeling for why active bass hold near the top of the water column, neutral bass hold at about mid water column and inactive bass are found on the bottom of the water column. It has everything to do with the activity level of the bass and feeding habits. Active bass are ready to eat and are near the surface looking for a meal and hunting for a meal. Patterns, activity levels, resting all have their place in the life of a bass and all are associated with depth. Aggressive bass are easy to hook and negative bass are the hardest. This is why, when a storm front has just passed by and the bass have shut down and gone inactive, waiting for the water to warm up, it’s so hard to catch them. They are inactive, you have to fish slow and drop plastics right in front of them in order to get them to bite. Activity levels and depth are connected.

Now a crank bait is a great lure to use out in open water situations along the front edge of a weed line and in near the shoreline. More crank baits are made to look like a Shad than any other baitfish in the world. A shad is a universal minnow that appeals to all bass in the lower 48 states. It looks like a minnow and all minnow are sushi. Matching the colors of the main baitfish you have the lake you’re fishing does help improve your odds at taking bass.

Suspending crank baits have the edge over normal crank baits in this situation in that they can be presented is so many different ways. Twitching and stop and go being two main big presentation differences. These actions add that extra touch of realism that make bass strike. Experimenting with the cadence of the pauses and twitches until you find exactly what triggers the bass into striking is a trial and error process but one that can’t be eliminated.

Another great approach to catching these types of bass in a school herding mode is with the use of a drop shot rig. This rig is basically a reverse Carolina rig where the lead is on the bottom and the hook and bait is suspended some distance up the line. This technique is said to have originated in Japan and used in heavily pressured ponds, lakes and reservoirs where fishing is tough. It then made it’s way to the west coast and finally across the nation. Personally, I know a lot of catfish fishermen who have been using this rig for decades, it was just never applied to bass, and so I have great misgivings about crediting the Japanese for discovering the technique. They just took a good idea and used it for bass.

This is a vertical presentation style of fishing mostly where you cast or drop the rig straight down over the side after you have decided how far up off the bottom you want the bait to be and then gently twitch the end of the rod to make the bait wiggle and therefore look alike. This is akin to doodling the bait to give it a life like look. A small circle hook is used and the bass are almost always nose hooked. The percentage of hook-ups is high too with very few strikes being missed with this method. Small finesse split tail and spade tail worms of different colors and a lot of clear colors are most effective.

This is not to say that the drop shot rig is for sitting in the boat and waiting for a bass to come along. You have to use your electronics to pick your spots. This rig can also be used horizontally too, that is to cast it out and retrieve it back. Since the bait is up from the weight it can be cast, say next to a dock and very slowly worked down the side of that dock until the length has been covered. This keeps the bait off the bottom but still very close to it. It is the same for any other structure. The key is do it extremely slowly and give the bass plenty of time to look over the bait before you move it away from him. It is a most versatile technique, when you can finesse and semi-power fish with the same set-up depending how you decide to fish it.

Stop looking for individual bass and start looking for schools of baitfish, you will have more success fishing for bass that way out in open water. And don’t let them smell you coming.

One other thing you will find if you look close enough or if you won an under water camera system, is that sometimes you will see bait fish swimming very close to bass without any apparent fear of being eaten. This is not an unusual circumstance and happens all the time in almost any body of water. But before a bass begins to hunt it will very often yawn. Unusual but true. At this time baitfish begin to move out of the immediate area and start looking for a hiding place. Any baitfish not noticing this yawn are in extreme peril. I know that this seems a strange happening but it has been well documented all over the US. The bass also begin to become more active at this time too and they swim around more than they would at rest. While it is hard to see from the platform of a boat, seeing a bass moving around verses one that is staying still, the moving bass is more likely to strike a bait or lure than one sitting still. Just thought you might find that an interesting fact to contemplate.

Today they make line Teflon™ conditioners that you spray on your reel and line to keep it from getting tangled up and to keep snarls from happening. This product is also a good line scent eliminator. After sitting it the house or garage all winter long the line on your reels will have picked up odors. Also if you are just starting out in a program to eliminate odors you have handled the reels and line with who-knows-what on your hands. So eliminating these odors makes sense.

The most fished for species of freshwater fish people sports fish for is the bass. This is because of the challenge they represent when it comes to catching them. It is a very dynamic sport where you try to out wit another predator in his own environment and that is not for the weak at heart.

Bruce Middleton
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