Find Hungry Bass During The Dog Days of Summer – Fresh Baitz

July 16, 2021

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Find Hungry Bass During The Dog Days of Summer

The warmer the water, the hungrier bass get, and they can be caught by savvy anglers who know where to look and what bait to use. In lakes with open-water forage, such as shad and blueback herring, fishing offshore humps and ledges is a summer staple. On the flip side, however, fishing docks and weed beds can be just as productive. Read on to learn how.

“As a general rule, docks don’t harbor a lot of big bass, but if there are lots of docks, the chances of catching a limit are enhanced. The trick is to explore every nook and cranny under the dock with baits such as beetles or scorpions.”

Shady docks provide excellent cover for bass and their prey. By late summer, pressured bass have moved into the most remote reaches underneath docks and overhanging trees along the bank, and traditional overhand or sidearm casting won’t reach them.

Skipping a soft-plastic bait or beetle under a dock or nearby shoreline cover as one would skip a flat rock across a lake’s surface is a proven presentation. Typically, a rod of about 7 feet long with a light tip is employed. The trick is to keep the rod tip parallel to the surface. Otherwise, the bait will sail up and lose momentum, or splash down short of the mark.

If skipping lures isn’t among your fishing skill sets, try pitching baits underhand with spinning tackle into the tightest nooks and crannies that others might not have been able to reach. Be patient and quiet, without banging a bait against pontoon floats or the dock itself. Let the bait fall slowly, twitch it or hop it a time or two, reel it in quickly and present it to the next target.

Also keep in mind the most productive docks usually are those that are built on pilings in relatively shallow water over a sloping bottom, rather than floating docks over deep water. Look at the shoreline. Is it relatively steep or flat? That topography is probably repeated under the dock.

As is the case with wood cover, single docks or a few docks scattered along a fairly lengthy stretch of shoreline are more likely to be productive than several clustered together in one cove. That’s not necessarily because there are more or less fish on solitary docks, but rather because an angler can cover a single dock quicker and more thoroughly.