5 Can't Miss Tactics For Dog-Day Bass

The dog days of summer can be taxing on anglers. Besides the heat wearing you down, these stressful conditions on the fish can make them harder to catch.

On the other hand, bass still have to eat, and at times they eat pretty good. You just have to be a little smarter than the fish, target the places where they live and be willing to experiment with presentations.

Here are five tips I use to make catching summer bass easier:

Fish Early And Late
You can catch bass during the day, but the best action will come during the low-light hours around dawn and dusk. You can also catch some giants fishing after dark.

The low-light hours can produce some of the best topwater fishing of the season, so be sure to give a surface lure a try. In fact, I usually keep a topwater bait rigged all day in case a school of bass rises to the surface to bust shad.

Go Upriver
That's where I go when I need to catch big fish because there is usually current that keeps the water oxygenated and a little cooler and results in active fish. I'll fish around covers, undercut banks and logjams. River bass are shallow creatures, which suits the way I like to fish with a flipping rod, spinnerbait or buzzbait.

Target Lake Points
Bass school on lake points in the summer, but that doesn't mean they're always deep. People think because the water temperature reaches into the 90s that bass will move to cooler, deeper water. However, lakes stratify during summer and create "thermoclines" in which the cooler bottom layer of water doesn't have adequate oxygen. Fish are then forced to live shallower.

For that reason, I always monitor my fish finder because it shows me where the thermocline has developed. If I see the thermocline is about 12 feet deep, I know to concentrate my fishing on structure at that depth.

My favorite points are those that slope gently from a creek mouth toward the main river channel. I prefer those that taper out to the channel where the current really bears down on it. When dam operators are generating current, those little places can be sweet spots that produce a fast limit.

When the fish are aggressive, I like to fish lake points with deep-running crankbaits. If not, a Carolina rig can entice them into biting.

Probe Shady Banks
Never discount a shady bank or a series of boat docks during the middle of the day. This is another good pattern when the thermocline has diminished the water quality in deep water. Jigs and worms pitched into the shady pockets can produce fish during the midday hours.

Try Finesse Tactics
By the time we hit midsummer, the bass have been fished hard with a variety of lures and tactics. Intense fishing pressure can turn them away from the bigger, erratic-running baits. In the past couple of years, I've found that do-nothing-style worms fished on Carolina or split-shot rigs get more bites.

I've had a lot of success drop-shotting Mann's 4-inch Dragin Worm or a salt-and-pepper tube bait during summer months. Downsizing your line and lures may be a slow and tedious way to fish, but it gets bites when all else fails.

BASSIN' Magazine Summer 2003