By Lawrence Taylor
It’s one of the most frustrating situations an angler faces, standing amidst schooling bass as they churn the water to a froth and not getting them to bite a thing. You rummage all the way through the bottom of the tackle box, but nothing you throw at them triggers a strike. I’ve been there, and you probably have, too.
BASS Elite Pro Angler Matt Reed and I encountered that situation in late October on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville. We cruised up on the violent melee with confidence because we’d been catching schoolies on Heddon Spooks just a mile or two away from this new area. After an hour and plenty of cursing, we pulled up the trolling motor and left.
“If that had been a tournament day, I’d have left a lot sooner,” Reed said. “You can sit on those spots and die if you can’t catch them. School fish look like the easiest prey there is, and sometimes they are, but when they do something like they did today they can be the most frustrating in the world.”
After a few fruitless casts Reed suspected that these bass were feeding on shad that were much smaller than the ones we were fishing previously. It was a theory he confirmed when he stuck one through the back on a crankbait. It wasn’t even 2-inches long.
“You get a couple of shad spawns a year and when the bass get on those little bitty shad it creates an issue,” Reed said. “It’s usually a late summer situation – July or August.
“A lot of lakes like Lake of the Ozarks or Table Rock, this is the time of year (late October) when you see the big shad move up. It’s a whole lot easier to match the hatch on a bigger baitfish than little bitty ones.”
Reed says that there are always at least two shad spawns, one at the end of the bass spawn and another in July or August. It was the fry from that summer spawn that was causing us so much frustration. We simply didn’t have the lures available to match this hatch.
“I like a clear Heddon Zara Puppy, the tiniest Torpedo or a Rebel Tracdown Minnow for that situation,” Reed said. “Clear is important to me. A clear bait doesn’t allow them to get a good look at it, especially with schooling fish. You’ll never exactly match those baitfish so a clear bait is best.”
So is lure speed, according to Reed, another factor in keeping the bass from getting a good look at the bait. The baitfish are flashing around probably faster than you can reel anyway, so a faster retrieve better mimics what the bass are focused on.
FLW Tournament Angler Kyle Mabrey was fishing the same day on Guntersville with outdoor writer David Hart. The bass were schooling on top intermittently. The fish had gone down and the two were standing and waiting when a boat buzzed by pretty close. Up came the school and they caught a few before the action went below again. Mabrey then hopped into the driver’s seat and started the big motor and the topwater action resumed.
“The motor scattered the shad, allowing the bass to attack again,” Mabrey said. “It’s a little trick to get them back to the top.”