Establishing the Summer Bass Pattern at Lake Z
For those in the know, my local lake is famous for having both a vast quantity of good bass, as well as some true monsters for the Northeast. I’ve had a chance to talk with a few anglers who’ve spent the last 30 years fishing it, and I’ve heard reports of multiple double-digits coming out of the water, particularly in the fall and spring.
Now nearing the middle of July, we are neither in spring nor fall, but actually approaching the hottest dog-days of summer, a time when a very particular pattern develops on Lake Z.
Yesterday, I went out with only a few hours on hand, and a very particular set of lures in mind. A trip to the lake last weekend had told me some important things, which I’ll highlight now:
- We’ve had a very mild spring/early summer, with water temps barely breaking the 70’s. After a week of straight 90 degree days, with no wind and limited rain, the temperature shot up like a missile, and so did the vegetation.
- Lake Z is known for developing nigh-unfishable weed-lines in the heat of summer. The vegetation is dense and unforgiving, but harbors numbers of bass and all of their forage.
- As the temperature rose throughout last week, the vegetation finally started to come up. It isn’t fully there yet, but it’s coming on strong.
When I got to the lake yesterday, I noticed that the vegetation had been on the march stronger still. A few shallow pockets had filled up entirely, with the majority of the near-shore sections of the lake about half full with vegetation, vertically speaking. This presented me with an opportunity to try and establish my go-to summer pattern; crankbaits, worms and topwater. Here’s how I set it up.
Right along the shoreline in the first place I decided to stop, I wanted to get after them with a shaky head, but there were too many weeds on bottom for me to use it. I was sitting 20 yards off-shore, in around 15-20 feet of water. Switching to a Black/Blue purple-flake Yum Dinger, I cast right up along the bank, but found my bait unable to penetrate the cover that had formed, so I moved my target further off the weeds, trying to get the worm to dangle right on the break of the weed-line. After a few unsuccessful casts in that manner, I turned to my left and noticed a sizable carp swimming along, and I tried to plop my worm on its head. I missed a few feet to the left, and went to adjust my paddle when I saw my line swim off. I set the hook, and managed to land this old grizzled bastard.
This catch told me a few things:
-I had my worm deadsticked in the water, not moving at all apart from the shimmy caused by the fall. Perhaps slow and steady is the way to go.
-The fish I had caught was suspended a few feet from the surface in about 15 feet of water.
-Half of that 15 feet of water (maybe more, maybe less, just my estimate) was filled with weeds. I suspected that the fish had been sitting just above the vegetation when my worm fell past its face.
Armed with this knowledge, I moved onward, now targeting my worm further out into open water most of the time, occasionally detouring to toss into a juicy pocket. I landed four or five fish in this manner, losing one more when she ran into the bottom of a laydown and came off the hook. Here’s another one I snagged on the worm.
Satisfied with my worming technique now, I tried to find some space to run my crank. The water is cloudy, with only about three feet of so-so visibility, and it’s absolutely full of loose vegetation. All of my non-weedless baits were getting snagged, and that’s never any fun. I did happen to know of a pocket that deepens dramatically – to about 20 feet only 10 feet from shore – and I decided to pop in there to see what’s up.
I dropped my worm in first, and immediately hooked but lost a fish on my first cast; they’re in there. I posted up and took out the crankbait, and fan-cast around the whole pocket, working a variable retrieve until I hooked up. The crankbait I was using, which has easily come out on the top of my favorite pile this spring/summer, is the Strike King KVD 1.5 Shallow (silent) in Black Back/Chartreuse. This thing is ideal for pond fisherman, or anyone who wants to have the ability to run a crank in the shallowest of shallow waters. It’ll stay, with a variable slow-fast/jerk-pause retrieve, at around 18 inches deep or two feet if you’re burning it, which is ideal for running the tops of not-yet fully emerged vegetation lines.
I ran the crank from the shore back to me, burning it down to its shallow depth at the beginning, then switching between short pauses and rapid handle rotations until – WHACK – fish on. She was a decent sized bass, with a good fight in her. I barely hooked up, but landed her nonetheless. Check it out.
I hooked and missed one more bass on the crankbait in that same pocket, and after an hour-plus of basically annihilating the fish, I decided to take out a Chug Bug just for fun. If the bass were suspending or cruising the tops of the submerged vegetation, maybe I could coax one up. I eventually did, but ultimately failed to land it. It wasn’t sizable, but it told me that the patterns I was trying to establish were based in fact – everything I threw worked as I’d suspected, all on a hunch thanks to that big ol’ carp.
Now, I’m going to try and replicate this exact same pattern again, throwing variables like color of worm, depth of dive on my crank, and type of topwater until I have them figured out fully. Soon enough, those weed-lines will be up in force and the whole pattern will switch up again, but for the next week or two, I think this is what’s going to work. We’ll see what happens!