Vanishing Bass

[ssaamm]

I almost posted this last question last week, but I thought that I had solved my problem. I was wrong. Ok, here is the deal. I have spent a lot of time fishing a nearby lake trying to catch bass. Last spring I had some limited luck on plastics and husky jerks. As the summer went on I was a little frustrated because all that I could catch was northerns. I went to other lakes an caught plenty of bass. Then, one weekend my brother was in town, and we hit this lake one evening in July. We just drilled the bass on plastics and surface lures around some docks-- nice ones 16-19inchers. The rest of the summer was great. I could run out for an hour and catch 5-6 nice ones. I thought I had 'em figured out. Last weekend I caught only a couple of nice ones on plastic jerkbaits-- not to mention a bunch of northerns, too. Went out today and not a bass to be found. Are they on their beds? (68-70 degrees water temp today) I was on another lake in the area, Rabbit by Crosby, and caught quite a few bass in the shallows. This lake is not following suit. I know that they are in there somewhere. I mainly go after them with 7in powerbait ribbontail worms or wacky-style senko-type baits. The lake is fairly shallow with dark water, lilly pads, wild rice, and pretty weedy. Any pointers would be great. You folks usually have some pretty good tips. Thanks.

[st.crioxfishin]

sam,

I was on a lake about 25min north of you over memorial wknd and am heading back up there today.

Over mem. wknd the bass were in shallow and what I belived to be a prespawn pattern. The water was 58 degrees then.

I'm assuming that the bass started spawning soon after that weekend up there. And that they are in the spawn or in the late spawn, post-spawn right now(this is a guess according to water temps).

The bass can be harder to catch at the end of the spawn and into the post-spawn.. Although they can be caught!

If you look in some of the other posts right now in this forum, people have given some good info about really slowing down to get these finicky fish.

I'd say stay with the senkos of flukes and fish slow. Also you can visually look to see if the bass are on the beds or not. This will give you a good indication of where they might be. If you see old beds that are vacated try a little bit deeper (5-10ft).

hope this may help!

--I'll be sure to post what worked for me(if anything does ) when I get back.

[Lunker]

Sounds like some lakes I fish up north as well. Early in the season I have had good luck fishing the shallow weeds, especially any inlets or outlets. White tube baits in shallow mixes of rice, pad, and reeds, plastic frog over the pads, senkos on the edges. As summer progresses the bass turn more into morning and evening fish for the shallows with similar tactics but then move deeper or under the pads during the day. If it's a lake with a lot of deep structure it can make vanishing bass even more difficult to find, but if it's more of a weed lake, they will relate to these. And when they move out of the shallows they will be on the outside weed edge whatever that is, or the first break.

Fishing with cranks, spinnerbaits, and other flashy baits will get me lots of hammer handles and that's about it. As summer wheres on here I would hit the pads first fishing a topwater frog and a backup rod with a plastic of your choice for missed fish. Then as the sun gets high, move out to the weed edge and fish that. I like wacky rigged senkos and plastics if the weeds are defined.

This may not be much help, but I summarized my tactics on the lake sounding most like yours. Good luck.

[st.crioxfishin]

Just got back today from 45min N of Brainerd. The bass were just coming out of the postspawn. Early in the week the bite was slower with mainly smaller fish (12-14 inchers). As the week progressed the fishing got better where I could go out and get some nice bass all over 15".

I was getting most of the bass in areas that had reeds. But the key was to look for ones in the deeper water (5-7ft was the deepest). The bass were really stacked in some of those reed beds.

I would first run a spinner bait through the area and would usually get at least one, then I would slow down and work it with a senko. This really worked well, and produced some nice fish. The biggest were four 17 1/2"ers.

I also had marginal luck in the pads fishing Black/Blue jigs. Buit the ones that did come from the pads were bigger.