Stick to the shallow end in the hunt for June largemouth
Bucks are abandoning beds, weeds are filling out, and although fishing pressure increases, you can expect to catch bass. The dynamic remains shallow water.
Jerkbaits may have produced best in April and May, but possibly now, nothing will out fish a fast-sinking Senko, Yum Dinger, Shim-E-Stick or the like in the shallows among thickening weeds.
Shallows exist relative to location and water clarity. They might be 3 or 4 feet deep, or 7 to 15 feet deep, but in any case, the water is likely at temperatures optimal for the activity of largemouths. You don’t need to dredge bottom. Instead, you can use fat-bodied worms as search baits by rigging them Wacky with the hook in the middle. A 1/0 circle hook attached to an O-ring fitted onto the worm by use of the O-ring tool easily purchased serves the purpose. Don’t add weight. These fat-bodied plastics sink quickly. Let yours sink a good way down – maybe halfway to bottom – and retrieve by twitches so the ends flutter. The worm will rise in the water column. Stop retrieving and begin again. Most often it gets hit while sinking but not always.
You’re going to collect weeds, but you might be surprised at the rig’s ability to get through despite the exposed hook. Largemouth bass usually swim near bottom, but in the clear water, they’ll rise to a relatively slow-sinking bait before another bass beats one of them to it. Besides, if you let the worm sink all the way to bottom and then begin retrieving, you might reel in a heavy mass of weeds on the hook.
Rigging an inset hook at the worm’s head, you can fish bottom effectively, an alternative that will produce. But if you fish at the faster clip I recommend, it’s possible that by covering more water, you’ll find more bass receptive. Just don’t overdo the retrieve.
Last June, I fished with Brian Cronk after we caught most of our bass during April and May on jerkbaits. We began by using the same, but I not only quickly switched out for a Yum Dinger; I hooked a bass on my first cast to 15 feet of water covering a flat, the hit having come hard on the drop. I experienced a distinct sense of being enabled to cover ground, that single aggressive response suggesting to me volumes of information, and though we didn’t fill the boat that day – as if that would exemplify knowledge gained – the Yum Dinger did the trick on quite a few more bass weighing over 2 pounds. All from public water.
On a different occasion the same month, Brenden Kuprel and I targeted muskies with spinners and plugs. Even so, I caught 15 largemouth bass on Dingers, also from public water, most of the bass around 2 pounds, one about 4, each from about 7 feet of water pervaded by milfoil.
Post-spawn bass may have nothing to do with water deeper than 20 feet. I fish 15 feet deep or shallower, and I like flats best. Plenty of anglers catch bass in shallows all summer long, but oxygenated depths of lakes or reservoirs hold summer largemouth under bluebird skies. My son and I have hooked them as deep as 32 feet. The depths are cooler and serve bass well if the temperature isn’t too chilly.
If you get excited about pre-summer fishing as I do, you can limit your approach to weedy areas in shallow water by working a Senko-type worm as if the bass will want it, but flats aren’t the only productive spots. Friends and I catch bass along shorelines that drop off steeply, but we don’t bother fishing quite as deep as we might towards the end of the month. Where we cast will weed-in more by then, and sometime in July, weeds will have filled out more or less in full volume.
One of the best summertime and early fall tactics involves the use of weedless frogs and mice in that thick stuff, if especially early and late in the day, but although it’s growing in quickly now, it might not have enclosed the surface. A bass will still grab a worm without needing shade over its head.
