During the Summer Dog Days Pitching for Bass is my preferred technique in the heat of the day. Depending on the type of water you are fishing. Bass are going to either go deep or relate to structure and shade in shallow areas. When I first started cutting my teeth on fishing bass tournaments. Pitching quickly became one of my favorite ways to catch largemouth bass.

When looking for the best places to find summertime bass on lakes in the heat. There are three key factors to consider are shade, deep water and flowing water. Here is a look at the three best places to find summertime bass based on those factors.

Summer Dog Days Pitching

Boat Docks

The approach to pitching a boat dock is crucial. I approach a dock and dissect it prior to my very first pitch.

• First: be sure your shadow doesn’t cast to where you think the bass might be holding.
• Second: analyze where your targets are going to be and pitch to the closet ones to you first
• Third: after you have pitched around the outer edge of the dock. It is now time to hit the hardest and most shaded targets around you..
  

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Rivers

“Everyone knows I am a river fanatic. I grew up bass fishing on the CT river and built my tournament career winning tournaments and guiding. The rivers and streams feeding into a lake offer plenty of water flow and oxygenated water. This keep bass active even in the midsummer heat. Run up these creeks or rivers as far as you can to find the strongest flowing water. The most productive spots to try in the tributaries are the pockets near the river bends. This is where wind and current push baitfish towards the bank. I started fishing major tournaments in 1983, and turned full time in 1996. What a ride that was. It was some of the best years of my life. Since I am retired now in Florida I no longer compete. However I fish 3 to 4 days a week. What a great life this is!”

Tips for pitching summertime bass

• Use heavy hooks, smaller hooks can bend out and cause you to lose fish when muscling them out of heavy cover.
• Pick your targets out and try to establish a pattern. Are you catching fish on one side or the other (Shady side or sunny side, up current side or down side) At the bottom, in the middle, or near the surface as you are pulling out?
• When you pitch to your target be ready for a bite at any moment, let your bait fall to the bottom, twitch a few times, pull the bait out and repeat. Depending on the how the fish are reacting you may need to try soaking a bait a little longer with more twitches, try dead sticking for a bit, or shake and bump the bait against cover at the surface.
• Look for shallow structure/vegetation areas that are close to deep water, big fish like to sit in shallow haunts near deep water for an easy retreat.
• Practice controlling the entry of the bait to make as little water disturbance as possible upon entry.
• Ease the bait out of the cover so your weed guard or weedless Texas rigged bait doesn’t expose the hook and snag up on the structure.
• Lock your drag down so that the fish can’t take any line. Then you will get good hook penetration and be able to clear the fish from cover as quickly as possible.
• Only lighten the drag in areas where clearing the fish fast off the cover is not as crucial like soft grass or vertical poles. Loosen the drag some, while using your thumb to lock down the spool for the initial hook set.
• using a high speed reel, this allows you to take up any slack line faster to set the hook, catch up to a fish running at you quicker, and also get your bait back to the boat faster for the next pitch.

“Last but not least, A lot of guys just don’t practice their pitching enough to be able to get it into that target zone. If they’ll practice their pitching and then really concentrate on where should that fish be, the darkest, baddest, hardest to get to area, then they’ll start catching a lot more fish.”

Summer Bass Fishing Tips will show you that you need to get out early. Fish the shallows hard based on water temperatures and bait. Once it gets hot focus on deeper water where the water temperatures are lower and the bass have structure to ambush bait.

Bass behave in predictable ways based on temperature, food and available structure

I have mentioned this many times bass are a very predictable fish. In general, they will behave a certain way based on three main variables:

• Water temperature
• Available food supplies
• Structure availability

Summer Bass Fishing Tips choices of preferred lures.

During these low-light hours both early and late, top-waters can be super productive. Choosing something like a buzzbait or a Whopper Plopper will allow you to cover as much water as possible to maximize the number of bites you can get during these short windows of time.

But slower top-waters like walking lures, poppers and hollow body frogs also work well if you’re fishing targets. So you could choose to run around for that last hour and target laydowns with a Spook for instance, trying to draw the fish up out of those laydowns that have been hunkered down all day.

BUT if you can figure out the three most important factors of water temperature, available prey items and available structure, then you are 80% of the way to catching more bass.

A trophy-sized Fast Water Pre-Spawn Smallmouth is what drives us to spend so much time, energy and money on our passion.

Nearly 30 years ago, I was able to first connect the dots to my favorite river system and its tributaries. Without much known data to support my own theories, I sought out to understand why my favorite areas of the river system were loaded in May and June and mostly devoid of smallmouth thereafter. I struggled to understand why my river smallmouths were in abundance for 4 weeks out of the year, and then no longer present. For me I found the high water time in may and early June led me to the upper rive in the fastest water. It dwelled on me how highly migratory river smallmouth bass can be. If free to navigate without obstructions, they’ll migrate long-distance like all other river fish species are capable of.

I find that Fast Water Pre-Spawn Smallmouth always leads me to the upper part of rivers. I mean the fastest and shallowest water with deeper pools adjacent to them. In pres-pawn they will bunch up in the 2 to 4 foot range. In rivers they are primarily feeding on crawfish. This is because the crawfish at this time are very lethargic. They are actually being sucked out of their holes in the banks. I can duplicate this fast Water Pre-Spawn Smallmouth pattern on any headwaters

Fast Water Pre-Spawn Smallmouth

Without river rat intuition and an extensive history with the river system, I could have otherwise blown through the staging pools unbeknownst and without ever testing them. It’s easy to ignore staging sites on rivers. Most anglers wouldn’t know how to identify one. Good spots like this one get revisited and used annually by the same fish.

Learn more in my new book “Strategies for Bass“.

Water temperature must be optimal as well. It’ll single-handedly influence a river migration in spring. 40 degree range, it’s too cold. At 48 to 52, we’ll finally find some smallmouth success, but only from isolated staging sites. Good luck ever locating them as 99% of the river will be vacant. Middle 50’s and slowly climbing, we’re getting hot! River’s loaded, and we’ll have a bonanza through spawn’s conclusion in early June where 50 fish a trip is to be expected.

Even the same flat can be fished in numerous ways depending on different conditions. I find it best to treat a flat like a kaleidoscope, with new patterns and elements emerging each trip. All anglers must consider five essential variables when fishing the flats: wind and air conditions; the sun’s position; water clarity and temperature; the size, shape and composition of the flat; and existing signs of life

Hunting fall flats bass is in many ways the same as that deer or hog hunters must identify animal signs, scents and habitat, skinny-water bass anglers should understand how to read a flat and react to different variables they encounter. There are many different kinds of shallow water flats, and fishermen are wise to treat them individually. Even the same flat can be fished in numerous ways depending on different conditions. I find it best to treat a flat like a kaleidoscope, with new patterns and elements emerging each trip. All inshore anglers must consider five essential variables when fishing the flats: wind and air conditions; the sun’s position; water clarity and temperature; the size, shape and composition of the flat; and existing signs of life.

When the water and air temperatures begin to cool after a long, hot summer, you need to be hunting fall flats bass. Throughout the fall, these flats play temporary host to millions of migrating shad as they make their annual trek to the backs of creeks. Wherever you find shad in the fall, you won’t have a hard time finding bass.

As soon as the temperatures begin to drop, a switch flips in those shad and tells them it’s time to go shallow.

“I’ve seen so many times when you have great looking cover and the bass are paying absolutely no attention to it.” When it’s the heart of the shad migration, bass will actually use the bait balls as cover, almost like a big security blanket. It gives them the best of both worlds—a constant food source and plenty of shade. You can throw at the good looking stumps all you want, but you’ll catch more bass concentrating underneath the bait balls.

Knowing the bottom composition of the flat is key to hunting fall flats bass as well. For those flats fishing anglers who have electronics on their boat or kayak, being able to identify rock formations or other hard sources of cover is a good sign there will be fish there. If you don’t have electronics, be familiar with the bottom structure. Those fish know cold weather isn’t far away and they follow the bait like a wolf pack. That’s why many anglers think early fall is the best fishing of the year.

I can’t stress enough the importance of bait fish during this time of year and acknowledges their presence as to why the bass head toward the flats. “This is why the flats in the fall are such a key structure.” During the fall feed, the bait makes its way back to shallow water. Generally speaking, on most fisheries, the forage has spent their summer in deeper water. When the temperature begins to drop, those bait fish migrate back to the flats and the bass follow.

Not all flats are created equally. If you make an effort to understand shad behavior, recognize desirable characteristics within a flat and learn what lures to throw, there’s a great possibility you will catch a lot more bass this fall.

Lee Bailey, Jr.
Retired Bassmaster Elite Pro
3 – time Bassmaster Classic Qualifier

Blade baits in Summertime work well for largemouth bass. They may not be a super popular bait for targeting largemouth bass, but you can definitely catch some nice bass on these baits. Some anglers will wind these baits in with a steady retrieve, however, one of the best ways to fish the Binsky blade bait is to vertical jig it in the summer and fall when big largemouth bass are suspended over schools of bait fish.

Fish blade baits in summertime Vertical

If you’re like most bass fishermen, you probably have a couple of blade baits you bought years ago, fished once or twice with little or no success, and tossed them in a forgotten corner of the basement. Now is the time to dust them off!

When largemouth bass move into deeper water, a blade bait can be very effective for vertical jigging. It’s not a super common way to target largemouth bass, but it works great when largemouth bass are feeding on bait fish in deeper water.

The trick to catching on blade baits in summertime is not to overwork them. An angler who is new to fishing The Binsky blades tends to fish them with big sweeps of the rod, causing the bait to jump 4 to 6 feet off the bottom. The most successful blade fishermen lift their rods just enough to feel the blade kick a couple of times. Making this adjustment will improve your Binsky blade bait success ten-fold.

Keeping regular contact with the bottom is crucial, so when targeting deep bass, you’ll need Binsky blade baits from ½ to 1 ounce. By far the best on the market is the Binsky blade bait. In lakes with alewives, use silver blades. In lakes without alewives, gold or perch-colored blades will be your best bet.