By Dustin Wilks
Special to BassFan
(Editor's note: "Catching Bass with Dustin Wilks" airs at 6:30 a.m. on Sundays and at 3, 7 and 11 p.m. on Mondays on the World Fishing Network. The six-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier writes about various aspects of the sport in these periodic submissions.)
With all the pro tournaments headed up north in late summer, not much current information is out there for the rest of us stuck in the heat.
Late summer undoubtedly is the toughest time of year to fish for bass in the South. I’ve learned a few things over many years that may help BassFans out.
Depending on the body of water, bass can be incredibly concentrated in tight, smallish schools roaming both the banks and open water, or simply scattered seemingly throughout the lake. Schools can be ghosts and bank fish very undependable.
To put the odds in my favor, I try to keep fishing simple, often not concerning myself with these roamers, but also making the necessary adjustments to catch fish.
The simplest tactic of all is to pretend it is fall and go up the creeks. Creeks with current are best, but often there is none because of low rainfall in late summer. You will be surprised how quickly and how many shad will be present in many of these, even with no current.
There probably won’t be as many fish in these creeks as there are in October, but there will be some – and some big ones – that simply have lived there all year without any fishing pressure. I resist looking deep under all the shad if they are really thick; that is a lost cause for me. I always look adjacent in shallow, heavier cover.
My approach depends on the type of creek. If it's big and flat, I’m looking for any defined channel with stumps. If none of that is around, I’m looking for isolated cover on flats.
Keeping it simple once again, I’m usually going fish a buzzbait if the water is shallow, like 1 or 2 feet around this cover. If it's deeper than 2 feet, then I’m going with a crankbait (usually a Yo-Zuri Squarebill for 3 feet and less and a Hardcore Medium Diver in 4 to 6 feet). I’m not really ever looking deeper than that in these creeks unless the water is clear.
If there is water willow (bank grass, as we call ot in the South) then I’ll have a Tactical Shad Eco-Pro Swim Jig with a Culprit Flutter Craw in albino rigged up. There is a good chance of big fish being in that type of cover all the time and nothing is more efficient in it than a swim jig.
On creeks that have some water on the banks, a buzzbait with Culprit Pro Frog Trailer in pearl white gets the nod, to skip under overhanging trees and shallow docks. A Falcon Expert 7’3’’ heavy-action is the perfect rod with a bit of tip for this job. Yo-Zuri 50-pound braid is needed for the heavy stuff and ease of skipping.
My next favorite pattern, if I can get nothing going in the creeks, is to fish bream beds. Usually these are in the same pockets that the bass spawned in, often right in the middle of the backs.
If there are active spawning bream around, there will be bass around. I fish two baits most of the time. First is a Yo-Zuri 3DB Prop in bluegill or gold/orange belly. I use this if the bass are obviously active and the beds are slightly deeper, like 1 1/2 or 2 feet, because I get really good hookups because they get this bait in their mouths really well.
If it's really shallow or I don’t want to risk getting hung up with treble hooks, I use a buzzbait with a frog trailer or a frog by itself – a special limited run Culprit Pro-Frog called Bream Bead Special. It’s a greenish hue with a pale orange belly, and they crush it. This looks and acts like a bluegill and gets positive strikes. I like the buzzbait with the Pro-Frog, especially on really shallow bluegill beds in just inches of water to 1 1/2 feet or so. If the water is dirty, however, I go with black.
There are always fish doing other things that are highly dependent on the body of water and amount of current in the system, but these two patterns will get you started catching bass if it's gotten tough for you in late summer.
