Bass Fishing Tips - Best Way to Locate Bass (1/2)

I always try to fish during the weekdays if possible, weekends are a total zoo around here. But if the weekend is the only time you have to fish this technique is your best bet for putting some fish in the boat. I try to get to the lake early to assure I am one of the first boats on the lake.

Most lakes in Southern California have a forty five degree shoreline like the one described in bass 22, most have quite a few. Shorelines dropping off into deep water are best most of the year, but in the spring spawning season you will do best in the back of coves in more shallow water. Lets say it is the summer season and the lake is crowded with fishermen, skiers, jet skiers and pleasure boaters, the worst possible conditions for fishing, that's why I choose weekdays. Lets say we have gotten to one of our favorite banks and we are the first ones there, we want to tie our boat abouta long cast from the nearest point, bow in to the bank, and anchor off the stern to hold the boat in position. I always carry two anchors with at least 200 feet of rope at all times, the anchors should be at least twelve pounds each, this gives you extra holding power in windy conditions.

More on why I have so much extra anchor line with me later. I carry a surf rod loaded with 25 pound test yellow line on a saltwater spinning reel, I tie a two ounce sinker below a very large float and cast it out about fifty feet out from the point, this is my "scarepeople." When someone comes around the point I politely say " Hey Bro, I have a line in the water there" 99% of the time the other boat gives the line a wide berth. You don't have to worry about the game warden because there is no hook or bait on it. ( sneaky, sneaky ) Now we can fish either side of the boat and cover about one hundred and fifty feet of the bank, and have it to ourselves all day for the most part.

I start out with the Rapala Frenzy and make several casts as near to the bank as I can without getting hung in the brush, I work it fairly quickly reeling medium fast while giving the rod tip quick jerks. After four or five casts to the right, I turn around and make some casts to the left of the boat. I then make the next series of casts about ten feet farther out from the bank. Then I turn around and fish the left side, if I am fishing with someone, I fish one side and they fish the other. I always wear a good pair of polarized sunglasses, this gives me the ability to see underwater brush and snags, not just to keep from hanging up, but to see structure that will hold bass.

After I have made a series of fast casts close, ten and twenty feet out from the bank I make the same series of casts about half the speed of the first series, and if I have spotted any underwater brush I will stop the lure just before I get to it, ( always try to stop to the outside if possible, so you can pull a fish away from the bush before it can dive into the bush and hang you up ) then I let the lure float to the surface and give it several small twitches, let it sit a moment and start my retrieve again. If I haven't caught anything yet, I will really slow my retrieve down, I cast the lure out and let it sit for about ten seconds then just barely twitch it, let it sit and twitch it again all the way back to the boat. This is done the same way as before, close to the bank, ten feet out and twenty feet out. This takes some time, but it tells me that there are probably no fish shallow. We have thoroughly fished the top fifteen feet of water and eliminated it as holding any fish.

Now that we have eliminated the top fifteen feet of water, its time to fish the fifteen to thirty foot range. If the fish were at all active we should have caught a few in the upper levels of the water, this is usually but not always true, sometimes the baitfish are deeper in the water column and the majority of bass are where the food is, deeper.

In lakes with healthy bass populations, I have no qualms about keeping a few one to two pound fish for the dinner table. ( check local regulations, or state Fish and Game regulations to make sure this size is legal to keep ) The first legal small fish I catch, I clean right away and look in the stomach to see what he was eating. Usually in the deeper summer waters I find shad, shad are found from twenty five to fifty feet deep in the summer, with the average being thirty-five to forty feet deep. I usually know beforehand what depth they are using because in prior days I have metered them under bird schools, with my Lawrance depth finder.

But lets say you don't have this information, so you have to slowly work down the forty five degree bank ( thirty five to fifty five degrees is ok ) untilyou start catching bass. For fishing the deeper water I will use a 1/2 to 3/4 oz. white weedless jig with a small Berkley Gulp singletail trailer on the hook.I fish this on a six and one half to seven foot med/hvy spinning rod with a medium size spinning reel ( the larger ones cast farther and have better drags ) loaded with Berkley Vanish, fluorocarbon line in ten or fifteen pound test depending on the amount of snags in the water. Casts are made parallel to the bank, and the lure is counted down ( one thousand and one, one thousand and two, etc ) until it hits the bottom and the line goes slack. As this lure sinks at about one foot per second, you can judge about how deep the water is where you cast your lure, but the main reason is we make multiple casts into the same depth range to strain the water, and if the lure has been hitting bottom at the count of fifteen and this time the line goes slack at twelve, a bass has hit it on the sink, and you should immediately turn the reel handle fast until the rod starts to bend the set the hook by sweeping the rod upward quickly, then pumping the fish quickly to get it away from the snags down there.

Pumpingis lifting the fish with the rod, when the rod is overhead, reel quickly as you lower the rod. The fish is lifted with the rod, not the reel, if you try to reel the fish up you will twist the line. Only use the reel to take up line as you drop the rod from twelve o'clock to nine o'clock, never reel when the fish is pulling drag.

Let the fish run against the drag and when it stops pulling line, lift it with the rod then reel as you drop the rod to gain line. You should keep a bend in the rod at all times, if you let the rod go straight, the fish will have slack line and will come unhooked easily. After a while this pumping will become second nature and you catch count will go up. Pumping will work on all fish that are big enough to pull drag on the reel you are using, from bluegills to bluefin tuna.

In the fall and spring when crawfish are the food of choice for bass, I cast into the bank and hop the lure down the bank, keeping it near the bottom where the "bugs" live. But in the summer when the fish are feeding on shad the lure is cast parallel to the bank and fished in a swimming retrieve, this is just reeling fast enough to keep the lure at about the same depth range. You want it to be bumping into limbs and brush occasionally, but not so often that you are always hung up, I vary my reeling speed until I have a happy medium between hangups and not brushing the brush at all. Always watch the rod tip carefully and be aware of the amount of bend in the rod, if the bend suddenly disappears, a fish has the lure in its mouth and is swimming towards you, set the hook right away!! This is why I like the Berkley Gulp trailers, they are made from real food and the fish tasting food, will hold on to the lure for quite a while, giving you plenty of time to set the hook.

Now after fishing the jig downward through the fifteen to thirty foot level we start hooking some bass at about the thirty foot level, this tells us most of the bass in this area of the lake will be concentrated at or near this depth. Normally I use my depthfinder to meter diving bird schools to see where the baitfish are located, this is the level where you will find most of the bass as shad is their primary food source in the summer on our local lakes.

You will find many of the bass have now left the shoreline for the midlake regions as this is where most of the shad are. Midlake bass are very tough to catch for the inexperienced angler without the proper electronics, so for now we will concentrate on shoreline bass. The bass also know the shad are in the thirty foot depth range so they set up shop near that depth and wait for a school of shad to wander by, then they rush out of their hiding place to grab as many as they can before the shad swim out of range.

Then it's back to their hiding place to wait for the next shad school. These bass are opportunistic feeders and will feed any time a school of shad or other prey come within range. Midlake bass follow shad schools around in schools of ten to fifty individuals and since the food is always near they go on feeding flurries two to three times a day. They hunt in packs ( schools ) so it takes them less time to eat their fill than the bass whose strategy is to set and wait for their meals to come to them.

So unless you are there when they go on a feeding rampage, you won't catch many. In a later chapter I will tell you my methods for being in the right place at the right time to make some outstanding catches. After we have caught several bass off our "private bank" the fishing will always slow down, thats when I will change colors on my jig or maybe switch to a plastic worm to catch a few more before the bite goes away. If thelake is real crowded I will sit on the same spot all day as other similar spots will have been fished hard by other boaters and the bass just seem to turn off due to heavy fishing pressure and quit biting. When things get slow I usually rest the spot for an hour or so and have lunch, then I can usually catch a few more fish before they shut down again.