Tricks for dead-sea dismals

When the current stops flowing, patience is a virtue

When George Gershwin penned those immortal “Summertime” lyrics “fish are jumpin’,” he definitely wasn’t talking about bass fishing. There’s nothing easy about fishing when it’s 100 degrees, the wind feels like jet-engine exhaust, and the air is almost as wet as the water.

As tough as it is above the water, it’s not much better below the water.

During the summer, oxygen levels down deep in many lakes get so low it forces bass to move into relatively shallow water where temperatures are high. There’s little or no current moving through big reservoirs or navigational pools on big rivers, so there’s no relief for fish in open water.

Under those conditions, bass seek refuge from the sun under whatever cover they can find, such as grass, logs, bridge pilings, docks or rocks. In these tight quarters, placing a lure right in front of them and provoking them with a reaction strike, or a curiosity strike, such as with a shaky head, is the only way to yield strikes.

That requires patience, but if you can tough it out, you can catch fish all summer long.

Legendary Chevy pro Larry Nixon of Bee Branch, Ark., said catching fish in midsummer depends almost entirely on timing, at least if you fish during the day.

“When that dead-current stuff happens, you have to be on good structure early and late, or you have to night-fish,” Nixon said. “You’ve got a real small time frame when fish are actually feeding, and it’s usually within an hour of sunrise or sunset. If you’re talking late summer, the peak feeding time is late evening, but you could also have a mid-major feeding period in the middle of the day.”

That usually happens between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. You can be sitting in a cove with the sun beating down and the water as smooth as a tabletop. Without warning, shad start flipping, and within a minute, the water boils when a school of largemouths or spotted bass tear into them.

“Schooling fish are always a big factor in the summer,” Nixon said. “I’ve been out there sweating bullets and had them blow up all around me.”

A feeding frenzy can last as long as 15 minutes, or as short as 45 seconds. When it happens, you’d better have a rod handy with a lipless crankbait, topwater, stick bait or a soft jerkbait. A spinning rig with an in-line spinnerbait is deadly in that situation.

“When I find them busting shad, I throw a little minnow-type popper or a stick bait at them,” Nixon said. “A 3- or 4-pounder, as well as smaller ones, can come up schooling when the time is right, and it can happen any time of day, not just early.”

Of course, the morning and evening topwater bite is a staple for summertime fishing. That’s often the only time the action is fast and easy.

PTSI pro Ron Shuffield, from Bismarck, Ark., emphasizes catching fish early in the morning because it eases the pressure of fishing for a limit. He can fill the livewell early and then spend the rest of the day hunting for kicker fish.

“There’s always going to be fish left over from the late-night or early morning feeding period,” Shuffield said. “I like throwing small topwaters such as a Pop-R, a chug bait or buzzbait. For a buzzbait, I like 1/4 to 1/8 ounce.”

As the day progresses, bass often move into emergent vegetation adjacent to deep water if available, brush piles and chunk rock in depths of 18 to 20 feet, Nixon said. In deep highland lakes, you’ll find them in depths of 22 to 28 feet next to drop-offs that lead to depths of 40 to 50 feet, he added.

“There’s nothing better than long points and submerged humps,” he said. “That’s the best you can get in the summertime – a deep-water border.”

When the morning topwater bite tapers off, Shuffield gets subtle. One of his standard tactics is to pitch a finesse worm on a 1/8-ounce jig around boat docks or any other shady structure where fish might be suspended.

“If there’s no current, I try to figure out where the fish are holding when they’re not feeding,” Shuffield said. “They’re going to be real inactive, and you have to make repeated presentations to catch them. You’re going to catch most of them around a deep breakline where they’re just hanging around, not really doing anything.”

One great spot to find suspended fish is on the shady side of bridge piers.

That’s an ideal time to use something like a drop-shot rig. “That can work if you like to drop-shot,” Shuffield said. “It’s basically just putting a bait in front of a fish that’s inactive. A football-head jig is something I like. I fish it on the bottom and try to fish it real slow. You just have to make repeated presentations.”

On lakes that have grass, the fishing can be very good in the dead of summer.

One such fishery is Lake Ouachita, site of the Forrest Wood Cup Aug. 2-5, 2007, at Hot Springs, Ark. Though it’s a clear, deep highland lake, Ouachita has vast beds of hydrilla and elodea on deep shelves that harbor some of the healthiest bass populations in the South. Not surprisingly, Ouachita is also famous for big bass, and it’s possible to catch a 10-pounder or better any day of the year.

During the summer, bass relate to grass much differently than they do in spring and fall. During those latter months, the water is cooler and the sunlight hits the water at softer angles, so bass relate more to the outside edges of the grass. However, they move throughout the day depending on wind, shade and any other factors that may affect baitfish position.

In the summer, they burrow deep into the grass, where it’s cool, dark and well-oxygenated. In those conditions, finding bass might seem like looking for needles in a haystack, but it’s not as hard as it seems. There are little pockets and travel corridors all through the grass leading from interior feeding and refuge areas. It’s almost like deer hunting. If you set up on a hot trail or find a big bass in its bedding area, you can catch it.

“At first glance, a big grass bed on Ouachita appears to be solid grass,” Shuffield said, “but there’ll be ditches and tunnels all through it leading to feeding flats. You just have to find them.”

You can also spot little hollow dents in the grass, which sometimes betray a hiding spot or an ambush spot.

“There are little hunting cavities in the grass where those bass hide,” Nixon said. “Once you find a grass point that holds fish, they can be anywhere in there. They could be burrowed dead center, or they could be on one side. Sometimes they might be off the end of it eating. You can Carolina-rig them or jighead-worm them, or you may have to pitch all the way to the middle of the grass.”

Anglers who aren’t used to fishing grass in deep water can easily be fooled.

The grass tops may be only a few inches to a few feet below the surface, but the stems may go down 8 to 15 feet to the bottom. In the summer, bass will be deep in the grass, but many anglers are frustrated because they can’t resist fishing over the tops.

To get those bass, it’s best to go after them with heavy jigs. This is a very subtle form of sight-fishing, but not in the traditional sense. You don’t see the fish, but you see the strikes. You’ll know it only by a quick line shudder that you’ll miss if you’re not paying attention.

In addition to heavy jigs, having brightly colored fluorescent line is also very helpful so you can see it more easily when a fish strikes.

The heavy jigs are important to punch through grass. Pitch your jig, and let out some slack with a quick upsweep of your rod. Don’t engage the spool until your rod tip reaches the 10 o’clock position (behind your head). You’ll have time because the grass tops will stop even a 1-ounce jig momentarily. Then throw your rod tip forward. This will allow the jig to fall straight down. Count the amount of time it takes for the jig to hit bottom, and then repeat the sequence. If the jig stops before it’s supposed to, or if the line shudders, set the hook.

“You’ve got to be a line watcher anytime you’re worm fishing or jig fishing,” Nixon said. “You’ve got to know whether it hits the bottom or if a fish has got it. A good fisherman knows just how long it takes for a bait to hit the bottom in 12 to 18 feet or 20 to 25 feet of water.”

For this kind of fishing, Nixon prefers a fast reel with at least a 6.1:1 line-retrieve ratio. He uses an Abu Garcia Revo and a 7-foot pitching stick with a heavy action. Line selection is also very important.

“You need a fast reel to take up slack,” Nixon said. “Sometimes you’ll jerk their head up when you set the hook, and they’ll make a little run to the surface. You’ve got a lot of things that can go wrong in the grass, and you might not get a good hookset. If you give them slack, they’ll get off.”

Shuffield also uses an Abu Garcia Revo STX and a 7-foot, 6-inch rod. For line, he uses 50- to 60-pound-test braid. Many anglers, after their jig or worm hits bottom, retrieve quickly for another cast, but Shuffield likes to work his bait a little longer.

“Most strikes are going to be on the fall,” he explained. “I usually let the bait go to the bottom and shake it. I’ll bring it back up and shake it again about 6 to 8 feet off the bottom. A lot of my success has been right there, suspended in the shade of that cover.”

The polar opposite of Lake Ouachita is Lake Hamilton, site of the 2005 Wal-Mart FLW Tour Championship. Hamilton has very little natural cover; just boat docks and bridges. During that tournament, many anglers spent a lot of time marking brush piles on their GPS units, but they caught very few fish off them during the championship.

That goes back to shade and oxygen, Nixon said. While the rest of the field struggled to find fish in deep water, Nixon and George Cochran had success catching them in shallow water under docks.

Another mistake inexperienced anglers make in the summer is working spots instead of patterns. For example, Nixon said, you know bass relate to shallow, shady cover, but you don’t know when fish will arrive, or when they might be inclined to bite. Fish do have peaks and valleys of activity, and that’s why Nixon consults Solunar Tables.

Inexperienced anglers will hit a spot, and if they don’t catch a fish, they’ll move on and not return. Nixon, on the other hand, works a series of spots that fit his pattern and returns to them until he gets what he wants.

“There’s always a pattern to grass and structure, but the key is knowing the spots,” Nixon said. “You’ve got to know where fish live. You just go back and forth until you catch them when they’re there. It’s slow and tedious. You may fish for an hour and catch nothing and then come back half an hour later and catch several.”

Nixon said it’s important to pay attention to your own rhythms. Anyone who fishes a lot has days on the water when nothing happens for hours. They get bored and inattentive, and it doesn’t really matter because the fish won’t bite no matter what they do. Suddenly, something changes. For no particular reason, you get alert and peppy, and it’s not long until the fish start biting. It may not last long, but it’s always the highlight of the day.

“It all goes by feel,” Nixon said. “Guys who spend a lot of time in the woods, you can tell when you’ve got no business being there. Then you get `that feeling.’ You notice squirrels running around. Your senses get sharp, and that’s when you see that ole’ buck slipping through the woods. It’s the same with fishing. It takes a while to develop that sense. My daddy always said the best bass fisherman in the world is one that’s patient.”

Patience is the key to summertime fishing, especially when the sun is bright and the waters are still. If you know where to find bass, you can catch them, but you have to have confidence in your tactics and faith that at some point in the day, you’re going to hit the jackpot.