Beat the heat with big baits and bigger bass!
It’s the height of the summer. By 9 o’clock in the morning the sun is high in the sky and it’s already scorching hot. There isn’t so much as a ripple on the water. But the weekend is here and you want to catch a bass, so you hook up the boat and head to the lake anyway.
Unfortunately, with conditions like these, you’re probably in for a tough swimbait bite and will have to break out the conventional tackle. Or at least that’s the popular opinion. But I totally disagree. In fact, these are the conditions that get my blood pumping. This is my favorite time of the year….wake bait time! And more specifically, I’m talking about big wakebaits in shallow water. For most Bass anglers, this seems a bit backwards. But, these techniques can be key to staying on good fish throughout the heat of summer.
Summer is for Swimbaits
During peak summer heat, and that’s July through early September here in the Northeast, most anglers will opt to fish deeper where the water is cooler and fish tend to school up. Dragging a jig or Carolina rig, or using finesse techniques can load the boat in a hurry this time of year. But for a lot of anglers, quality trumps quantity. And a great way to catch quality fish is with a big bait.
This is why I love to pick up a swimbait rod, tie on a large wakebait, and venture into the shallows. There are some very impressive fish to be had in these shallow environments in the summer if you know where to look and how to approach them. And trust me, you will be surprised by the quality of the fish you will find in these skinny water environments, even in the heat of summer and even in the middle of the day!
Now that we have established when to do it, let’s consider where to look and what baits to throw once you’ve found the right areas.
Choosing Wisely
I think one of the biggest misconceptions within the world of swimbait fishing is that the best tactic to catch big fish is to tie on a humongous bait and start casting. This is simply not true. Smaller swimbaits can catch giant fish as well. However, during the summer months, fish sure do seem to like a big meal. When choosing baits for summer I usually stay in the 7- to 11-inch range and typically opt for trout and shad profiles.
A 9-inch MS Slammer is my clear go-to bait, but there are many great wakebaits for fishing around shallow cover. Custom builders like Curtek Customs, Rafa Customs, 3:16 Lure Company, and ZFG Swimbaits all make awesome wakes, in big trout profiles. I will also, occasionally, fish bluegill and rat wakes in this situation as well. I like rats from Biggnasty Baits, Sac-Pig, and Illude Baits around shallow grass. For bluegill baits, I like the Beeb’s Big Baits Blaster, Reckless Rodents Big Lotus, and Black Dog Baits Bubba Cracker.
One important thing to note about these baits is that many of them will “crank down”, meaning they will swim subsurface with a quicker retrieve, and that can be a good thing. You’ll find that on many days the fish will be reluctant to eat a bait that’s swimming right on the surface. You’ll get swirls and short bites or see followers tracking your bait from below. This is your cue to try cranking a bait down, even if it’s just six inches below the surface, it can turn on a wary fish. This can make all the difference in the world and help you turn a frustrating day of watching fish reluctantly shadowing your baits into a day of catching fish.
How Shallow?
I’ve always enjoyed fishing swimbaits in shallow water. There’s just something special about casting to a boat dock, patch of eelgrass, or a juicy looking laydown tree with a big bait with the hope that a trophy fish will comes lumbering out from the shadows and assault my giant swimbait! But what it took me a long time to realize is that I – very often – wasn’t fishing shallow enough. I think most anglers would consider water less than 6 feet to be shallow. And over the years I’ve spent much of my time fishing even shallower than this, roughly in the 3- to 5-foot range.
Naturally, I would occasionally cast into much shallower water and sometimes those areas would give up a really nice fish. Eventually it dawned on me that those occasional catches were not by accident. Those fish consistently live, or at least feed, in these ultra-shallow areas. I’m talking about areas in the ‘just inches’ to 2-foot range. Now, I’m consistently catching quality fish in the 3- to 5-pound range, in the heat of the height of the summer season, casting into water so shallow that I don’t believe it can actually hold good fish, but I make the cast anyway… and it frequently pays off! So don’t be afraid of going “too shallow” because, there’s no such thing!
In The Dark
Another effective method to fishing the shallows in summer is to grab your gear and head out after dark. Night fishing is an excellent way to beat the heat and potentially find some of the fastest action of the season. When night fishing in summer, I typically stay shallow, but I do make a couple of changes in my approach. The first is that, although I still target shallow water, I tend to fish areas with less surface vegetation and focus more on submerged grass and rocks. With the lack of any amount of light, fish will generally venture further away from the overhead cover that weeds provide in search of food and it’s just harder to see lanes in the cover at night. Shallow rock piles, stone walls and laydowns are ideal for night fishing in summer.
The second big change I make at night is that I downsize my baits. After dark I prefer baits in the 4- to 8-inch range. I think at night, the wind is typically calm and a smaller, more subtle bait gets enough attention while offering a more natural and realistic presentation. However, I might opt for a larger and louder bait at night if I am fishing in windy conditions.
Keep it Honest
| HOP IN THE SLOP |
| Now, let’s be realistic. Sometimes a giant hard bait with multiple treble hooks is just not the best method for probing these areas once they have become overtaken by thick mats in late-summer. But this does not mean that you have miss out on those monster blowups, the hollow-bodied frog gives us another way to access these skinny water summer beasts. Being a swimbaiter, I have a tendency to go big, so something like the Spro King Daddy might be my first pull. But whatever frog you prefer, this technique can be an excellent alternative to swimbaits when you still want to target these ultra-shallow waters, but cannot effectively fish a swimbait due to the density of the cover. |
Another key here is that ALL water holds fish at times. It doesn’t always need to look “fishy”. I have caught many quality fish on wakes in the summer just casting to bare banks with gravel or sand. With all that said, I still heavily favor targeting any type of cover in the shallows such as pads, eelgrass, brush, laydowns, rocks and docks. Most lakes and ponds here in the Northeast will have some or all of these shallow-water ambush areas for large fish to use and for anglers to cast to.
I would encourage anyone looking for some summer topwater fun this year to grab your favorite big bait, head for the shallows, and put in some time picking apart whatever shallow cover you can find. This tactic will work anywhere in the Northeast and is bound to produce some quality fish, as well. It might even become your favorite summer technique, if you can’t tell, it definitely is my number-one technique for big summer largemouths.
