The dog days of summer might not seem like the best time to catch a big largemouth, but certain tactics and situations can spawn some big-fish bites. Here’s what you need to know.
When the sweltering, dog days of summer arrive in Mississippi, it’s time to change tactics to catch lunker bass.
As the temperature rises, bass activity slows, but if you know where to find them, you can catch them while others are in the cool air conditioning in the house. Large bass retreat to their unseen lairs, but they can be caught from around deep ledges, grass and pad fields, laydown trees, brush piles — and at night.
Magnum tubes for suspended bass
Terry Bates of Greenville and I once spent a couple hours fishing an old oxbow lake along the Mississippi River with nary a bite. The river had risen, and the bass were scattered as a result, with little brush or wood cover visible.
Bates pulled out a rod rigged with a magnum tube and started fishing flooded willow trees. He concentrated his efforts on the base of the trees, pitching his tube near them or into any limbs that were submerged. As he approached one tree that had limbs broken and hanging into the water, he pitched a tube into it and let it free fall, but it didn’t get far before it stopped falling.
Wham!
Bates reared back on his rod, and a lunker bass exploded through the surface, slashing and thrashing back and forth as it fought wildly. Bates made quick work and horsed him into the boat in no time.
“Any time you have a sudden rise on the river during the summer, the bass will suspend in the flooded trees and laydown logs,” Bates said. “It’s just a numbers game then, and you have to keep that bait in the water and cover a lot of territory. I’d key on the laydown limbs, if I can find any, and work the bases of the trees if not.
“I’ll let the lure fall about 10 feet and bring it back to the boat and pitch to the next one. The bass are usually suspending in the cover or beside the tree trunks, and they’ll eat the tube if you put it on them.”
I watched as Bates’ cherry-picked several bass in the 5- to 7-pound range from the flooded timber, and I quickly rigged up a tube of my own. He was using 20-pound fluorocarbon with a pegged bullet sinker, glass bead and magnum tube.
It didn’t take many casts before I pitched beside a tree, and the lure only went about 5 feet before stopping. I reared back on the rod and was stopped cold for an instant before a bass started tearing line out of my reel. After a short fight, I wore him down and landed him, took a few pictures and released him.
According to Bates, the key is to watch your line, and if it twitches, moves to the side or stops after a few feet, reel in the slack and slam the hook home.
Pitching and flipping a magnum tube has consistently worked for me in hot weather or after a cold front in brush tops from 5 to 12 feet deep as well. Whether they’re along a bank, on a flat or on a ledge, pitching a magnum tube will draw strikes from lunker bass when nothing else will.
Cool nights, hot bites
Big bass become more active after the sun goes down, and many anglers take advantage by fishing at night. Over the years, I’ve taken advantage of cooler temperatures and active bass. I’ll fish the same areas where I find bass during the daytime; the big difference is that bass actively feed after the sun goes down, and many will move up to the top of the submerged ledges and drop-offs in search of an easy meal.
One summer evening a while back, my boat was anchored on top of a submerged hump as the sun went down. I’d gotten a few bites, but at 9:30, I worked a 14-inch black worm through a submerged tree about 10 feet deep. As the worm came over a limb and fell, my line never stopped. I never felt a thing, but I knew it should have stopped by then.
Wham!
I jerked the rod back as quickly and hard as I could, and the angry bass felt the sting of my 5/0 Gamakatsu hook. He fought like a demon, diving toward the bottom and stripping line off my reel. I finally wore the bass down and turned him toward the boat, but it was nip-and-tuck as he took out line and I reeled some back in. Back and forth it went for a while. As the bass surfaced, he wallowed on top like an alligator and sent a wave of water across the bow.
I quickly led him to the net, and we got him safely into the boat and could barely believe our eyes. The bass was definitely over 12 pounds, one of the biggest I’d ever caught. After a couple of pictures, I released him and watched as he swam towards the safety of the bottom. I rested for a few minutes and drank a soft drink to cool off and settle down before I started back fishing.
We continued working the hump, which was 10 feet deep on the top and dropped off to 15 or 20 feet on the sides. The key was to work the lure over any brush we could find, as the bass had moved up onto the top and were actively feeding after spending the day on the bottom.
I switched to a Carolina-rigged Bass Pro Shops Magnum worm in grape color with about a 5-foot leader and kept working the area along and to the side of the ledge. At 10:45, I pulled the worm through the limbs of another submerged brush top, and another bass grabbed the worm and yanked my rod straight down.
Bam!
I bowed up and drove the hook deep into the jaw of another monster bass, and it bore down into the treetop. I worked him back and forth and finally cleared the brush and brought him back to the boat, finally netting him after an epic battle. This bass was almost a twin of the first, both weighing more than 12 pounds.
Big crankbaits and ledges
Paul Elias of Laurel has made a living out of finding and catching big bass on deep-diving crankbaits; he even designed a lure for Mann’s Bait Company that bore his name: Paul’s Bait. It was perhaps the ultimate crankbait when Mann’s came out with it, a great ledge bait I used to win many tournaments on Okatibbee Lake and in lakes along the Tombigbee River. Elias bounced the big crankbaits off of stumps and ledges to win the 1982 Bassmaster Classic on the Alabama River, and it’s still an effective technique today.
I learned it fishing Ross Barnett with my grandfather, J. P. Nolen, and my uncle, Jimmy Nolen, back in the 1970s and have caught hundreds of lunker bass since. It’s still a favorite technique that I employ during hot weather.
During one tournament on Okatibbee, I worked the crankbait along a submerged creek channel on the main lake. I caught four, 4-pound bass on consecutive casts on a scalding, hot day by bouncing the crankbait off of a stump on the lip of the ledge. With a solid 5-fish limit, I won the tournament by several pounds.
If you’re looking to catch big bass in hot weather, a large crankbait is just the ticket to entice a reaction bite. No matter what crankbait you like to throw, if you can bounce it off of a stump or ledge, bass just can’t resist it. They’ll bite it when they won’t chase anything else.
Frogs in the salad patch
Many lakes have only shallow water, so the bass can’t get deep enough to beat the heat, and some may have various types of grass or lily pads. Bass and baitfish escape the heat by living under the pads and grass, and you’re subject to catching a bass any time of the day on a frog. I learned how to fish a frog on Ross Barnett, and they are big-bass magnets no matter where you fish.
While the best times are early and late, when bass are active, or on a cloudy, drizzling day, frog baits may entice strikes from bass during the hot part of the day. If you work that frog right on top of them, they just can’t stand it. Sometimes they want it fast, and sometimes they want it slow, but they will usually hit a frog if you fish it long enough to see just what action they’re looking for.
I’ll hit the edges of the pads, the holes or pad openings or cast across pad points. I’ve even enticed strikes from bass at high noon from lakes as clear as Turkey Fork. I’ll find an area with movement of baitfish or sounds of bream sucking and feeding under the pads and use a popping frog in a walk-the-dog fashion, along the edge of the pads or in openings. Some of my biggest bass caught on these frogs have come from gin-clear water in the pads.
If you want to catch a lunker bass in August, you might want to try a few of these tried and proven tips and techniques. You just might catch the bass of a lifetime.
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