For most kinds of fishing not much is worse than the dog days of summer. Those crappies you caught up in the brush in springtime are 35 feet deep. In those classic smallmouth lakes like Dale Hollow the best fishing is in the dead of night. The largemouth aren't biting and besides you feel like you are baking your brains out inside your skull after a few hours on a bass boat in the middle of a ninety degree summer day. And if you get lucky and catch a muskie or a big striper it might not even survive. Heck even the bigger bluegills are deep and a whole lot harder to catch.
But if you are a die hard stream fisherman like me you might find yourself wishing that it never cools off. For you see the ticket to catching big smallmouth, or any fish for that matter, is finding them. And hot nasty summertime weather limits the places you are going to find active feeding smallmouth. Just like the old saying goes it's location, location, location.
I don't normally fish those classic deep fishy looking pools this time of year. You can certainly catch some fish out of them early and late in the day but I normally leave them alone right now. Instead I'm looking for the fastest water I can find that's got a little bit of depth close to it. I know some sources say it's because this water has more oxygen and some sources say it's because these places have more food. I'm inclined to think it's a bit of both with the major emphasis on food.
The warmer water for sure ramps up a basses metabolism and he has to eat more in warm weather. And that fast shallow water is just crawling with food, the whole stream is. You walk along the margin of a rock bar and schools of minnows flee before you. In many small streams this time of year seemingly every rock has a crayfish under it. Insect life abounds and frogs jump in as you near. But the water is as low and as clear as it's ever going to get and it isn't easy to sneak up on all that food if you are a bass.
Where's the easiest place to sneak up on an unsuspecting meal? In the jumbled rocks and swirling cover of the fast water. You can sneak up on an easy meal all day long instead of having to rely on the half light of early morning and late evening. And with his ramped up metabolism that bass wants to eat all day long. Believe it or not, the hotter the weather the more likely you are to find me fishing right in the heat of the day.
I also actually carry fewer lures this time of year as well. I'm more concerned with having something that fishes well in a foot of very fast current than I am in imitating particular food items. Most lures don't function well in super fast water. Many crankbaits will turn belly up in too fast of a current and while inline spinners work swell against the current they don't do so good fished with fast water. Like I said my lure selection really narrows during the middle of the hottest days. I'll sometimes throw a willow leaf spinnerbait. Willow leaf spinnerbaits work well in current, other spinnerbaits like single blade colorado or tandem bladed colorado spinnerbaits not so much. You can throw a living rubber jig or a tube as well or a swimbait hooked on a texas rigged swimbait hook. But for my money the best lure is a grub or swimbait on a plain jighead. Use something like a 1/8 ounce or in super fast water (my favorite kind) a 1/4 ounce jighead and pitch it in and let it sweep down on a tight line. Pick it up and flip it back in. Short controlled casts are the drill here. In really fast water a forty foot cast is going to get hung up anyways. Instead pop your lure in there, fish three feet, crank it in and zip out another ten foot cast and fish that two feet. Fast action fishing. And even though the water is low and clear if it's fast enough for this type of fishing the swirling raging water gives you the cover to get close. In fact those carp that flush fifty feet away from you down the pool sometimes bump into your legs up here in the fast stuff.
Often the best places are man made, water shooting around a bridge abutment, right against a lowhead dam, the rubble of a blown out dam, a wing dam, or best of all where someone has just dumped a bunch of concrete rubble in the river years ago. On more natural waters you are looking for riffles that drop off sharply into deeper water, riffles that have a deep fast slot, and any big boulders in the fast run leading into or out of the riffle and the mouths of smaller tributaries. And in any kind of stream don't ever pass by any kind of pipe that's pouring a lot of fast water into the river. Many factories use water to cool their machinery and some big factories dump a torrent of fast water out of a pipe. Often this is the fastest water for miles and often the best place for summertime bass.
So to make a long story short put on some old tennis shoes, grab a medium action spinning rod and a few jigheads and grubs and head out. Even if, heaven forbid, you don't catch monsters, wading a stream in the middle of a hot summer day is a great way to cool off.
No comments:
Post a Comment