Start super early

Bass are sluggish this month

When August arrives, I think about staying in my air-conditioned house and getting ready for my fantasy football draft. We’re in the dog days of summer, and it can be miserable on the water during the heat of the day.

But since I’m in the fishing business, I try to target bass when I get a chance. In August, that used to be at night. Years ago, in my younger days, I’d fish all night. Now, an all-night trip takes me a day or two to recover, so I’ve moved to fishing super early to try and be out before the recreational boat traffic cranks up, and when the fish are most active.

Bass are cold blooded; you hear a lot about that when we talk about winter or spring fish – but usually not in summer. But when the surface temperature is in the mid- to upper 80s or the 90s, bass are affected. They are sluggish, lethargic. They don’t move as much, they don’t chase, so they don’t need to eat as much. The baitfish are sluggish, the bluegill and shad. So I want to fish during those times when bass are most active, and that’s the last few hours before daylight. That’s when you have your lowest water temperatures in the 24-hour cycle. The fish will feed better, and there’s no recreational traffic.

Go super early

“Super early” to me means waking up between 3 and 4 in the morning and getting on the water by 4:30. I will usually fish until 9 or 10, mid-morning, then I’ll get off the lake. I’m out on the water at one of the most-enjoyable times in August.

When I get on the water that early, I’m looking to find the shallowest cover in a lake and fish it. The last few hours of dark, that’s when fish will be the most shallow. Depending on the lake, the best cover might be boat docks, lily pads, blowdowns – any kind of vegetation. And a lot of that depends on the moon. If it’s a dark night, if you don’t have any light, it will be hard to fish blowdowns and lily pads. If  you have a big moon, street lights, lights on boat docks, lights around bridges, you have more options because you can see a little better.

I like to fish a Texas-rigged worm, maybe throw a square-billed crankbait, and as dawn approaches, I’ll fish topwater.

I approach worm-fishing in the dark hours in a little different manner than during daylight hours. Since it’s dark and fish are looking up, I like to fish a worm with a big silhouette, a dark worm. And I want to make that worm’s profile stand out a little, so I like to Texas-rig a Yamamoto Oki worm – a 10-inch floating worm.

I like to fish it Texas-rigged, with a 5/16-ounce tungsten weight and a 5/0 VMC offset hook. I’ll also fish it on a ball-head jig, or a ¼-ounce shaky head. I’ll have them rigged both ways when I let my trolling motor down at 4 or 4:30 in the morning. I love to fish the tilapia magic color: a dark base color with blue, silver and pink/red flake.

Weigh it out

I like that big silhouette, but what I really like is that, because of the floatational material it’s made from, an Oki worm will stand straight up, and that’s something different. If you fish a Senko texas-rigged, it’s going to sink to the bottom, settle and stay there. The Oki worm will sink and stand up; the weight and the head of the worm will be on the bottom, but 7 or 8 inches of the Oki will be standing up.

The size weight I use depends on the cover and depth. If I’m fishing 5 feet or less or around brush, I’ll throw a ¼-ounce. I want it to fall nice and slow, and I don’t want it to get hung up like a ½-ounce will. Now, in 20 feet of water, I’ll fish the ½-ounce.

I think the tungsten weight is especially important when you’re fishing in the dark, because you really need to stay in contact with your worm, to feel it, because you can’t watch the line. And simply, the tungsten weight is more sensitive, because of how dense tungsten is. You can really feel it. If you use a lead weight for an hour or two, and then pick up a rod rigged with a tungsten weight, you can’t believe the difference in sensitivity.

Go to the top

I’ll switch from the worm to a topwater bait when it just starts to crack light. When you’re deer hunting, you’re allowed to start 30 minutes before sunrise. I think moving to a topwater bait at “legal shooting time” is a great idea.

Right now, I’m really having some success fishing a relatively new bait, a Rapala Jowler 127. It’s a pencil popper with three treble hooks – a feather on the back hook. It’s a heavy lure, 15/16ths of an ounce, and it just came out last year. It makes a lot of noise and stirs up a lot of water. It gets their attention two ways: the big silhouette of a big lure, and all the water it moves. I’ll usually wait until the first sign of good light before sunrise before I start fishing, and if they’re biting it, I’ll keep throwing it. Sometimes you can get a topwater bite for an hour or two after daylight. After that, I’ll go back to a crankbait or Texas-rigged Senko or worm, and fish a little deeper before I quit at midmorning.

Because it’s a heavy bait, I’ll fish a Jowler on a 7-foot-3, medium-heavy Lew’s baitcasting rod with a Lew’s BB1 Pro reel spooled with 17-pound Sufix mono.

Lots of guys wait until dark in the evening to start fishing, and fish until after midnight. I think you still have a lot of recreational boating traffic around 9 or 10 – a lot of guys in boats going home – and by waiting until 4 or 4:30, I can fish for six hours and miss out on most of the recreational traffic.

Fish early, not late:

Many bass anglers fish from 9 p.m. until after midnight, but that’s not the coolest part of the day, and plenty of recreational boat traffic is still on the water between those hours.

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