Around the middle of summer you will find bass starting to
inhabit weedbeds to feed. Males will be off the nest, and
females will be recovering from spawning. Often this will
coincide with a spell of continuous hot days with high humidity
and calm winds. It feels like summer to you, and to the bass.
From this point on to some time in the fall, bass will be
either in or very near the weeds. There are a variety of ways
to catch them, including chucking spinnerbaits at the banks
and fishing the thin weeds in the shallows or patiently probing
the depths of the weedbed with heavily weighted Texas-rigged
worms. I am going to be looking for the most active and aggressive
fish in the weedbed. They’re going to be in two sorts of places,
either up high along the top of the weeds or right along the
front of the deep weedline. Those are the two places where
the most catchable fish are going to be throughout much of
the summer. In order to present your lure in the most natural
fashion to these bass you need a two step approach. Some would
call this a search technique and a finesse technique. For
our purpose let’s call it the two step shuffle. First step
is going to use the search techniques of a crankbait and a
baitcasting rod. The beauty of the crankbait is its ability
to cover a lot of water quickly. You can work the crankbait
several ways. One of the simplest is to throw it parallel
to the weedline right tight to the weeds. Run it back as close
to the weeds as you can without getting hung up all the time.
Flipping and pitching my crankbait along the weed edges like
this I want a good 6’ 6” foot Shimano medium heavy rod. I
would team it up with a Shimano Castaic SF reel and spool
on some 12 lb. Stren Magnathin line. The next step is to use
the finesse style. This would consist of a jig worm and a
spinning rod and reel combination. The spinning rod again
would be a Shimano Compre rod with a Stradic or Sustain spinning
reel spooled up with 8lb, test Original Stren. Since the jigs
I will be using are fairly light I will need thinner diameter
line to keep in contact with what my line is doing. The 8
lb. test will handle the weedline bass well enough if you
are careful to tie good knots and check your last foot of
line frequently for nicks. As with other game fish bass can
be provoked into striking by changing the pace of your retrieve.
One retrieve which works well for me is to stop the bait for
a second when it is about halfway to the boat, then continuing
a normal retrieve until the bait is close to the boat. Then,
right next to the boat, lift your rod up quickly to make the
bait zip to the surface. The size of your crankbait should
relate to the weather and time of year. Keep switching sizes
and colors until the right one is found. Early in the summer
and on sunny, cool days the bass will be relatively inactive;
they won’t want to chase lures much then. At these times you’ll
do better with small lures, baits of about 1/8 to 1/4 ounce,
and work them back slowly to give the fish more of a chance
to respond to them. In hotter weather you’ll get more action
on quickly retrieved lures of 1/4 to 3/8 ounce size. The jigworm
is where the fun begins. You want a plain jig (no body) in
1/8 ounce size. It has been my experience that the color of
the jig head makes no difference, though the color of the
worm does. Your worm should be from 4 to 6 inches long, and
I strongly favor those with action tails, or paddle tail.
A very good example are the new Berkley Gulp worms on the
market. I feel the flutter of the tail is attractive to bass,
and it might even be important in slowing down the drop of
the worm to speeds which are easier to fish. Once you’ve cast
the worm up onto the weeds, allow it to sink until it stops.
Because it is light it will almost always come to rest somewhere
in the weeds. Remember to keep the line tight, so if a bass
hits, you will know and be ready to set the hook. After the
worm stops falling, pick it up again and keep it working back
toward the boat. I usually like to pop it off one weed and
let it drop again. Once the jig has cleared the top of the
front edge of the weeds you can let it fall all the way to
the bottom, give it a couple of hops in the clear water in
front of the weeds, then bring it back for another cast. There
really isn’t any wrong way to work the jigworm. Any kind of
swimming dropping hopping action will get strikes. Bass will
most often grab the worm when it is dropping. Always try to
keep in touch with your lure so you know when a bass has taken
it. The speed of the crankbait and deadly attractiveness of
the softly dropping worm give you a two step approach for
weedline summer bass, give it a try and you will be amazed!
For more exciting non stop action look me up on the web at
www.walleye.info. Hope to hear from you soon, and don’t forget
to take a kid fishing.
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