Freshwater Fishing

Why guess at the best lures to use when you can call on the expertise of one of the world’s most accomplished bass anglers?

Early fall bass fishing presents challenges. The fish stay on the move and can be in many different types of areas.  With changing conditions, they also can be a bit moody. That said, if you understand seasonal bass behavior and use lures and approaches that capitalize on that knowledge, fishing can be very good this time of year. With that in mind, we talked with Jason Christie and got his picks for the 10 best lures for early fall bass fishing.

Drifting allows you to cover water and find feeding fish and is extremely effective for catching catfish during summer. Learn the approach of a Santee Cooper catfish guide.

“That’s the kind we want,” Capt. Brett Mitchell said with a confident smile as the stout rod I was holding bent hard and the line peeled off a tight drag. Several minutes later his assertion was affirmed as a fat blue catfish came into sight and eventually got within reach of Mitchell’s big net. Putting a 27-pound catfish is a good start to any day.

“Drag a bait around here, and you you’re going to catch catfish,” said Mitchell, who operates Fishing with Brett on South Carolina’s Santee Cooper lakes. Mitchell also guides for bass and stripers and fishes a variety of ways, but his primary summer approach is to drift the open waters of Lake Moultrie – the Lower Lake in the Santee Cooper system – for catfish.

Mitchell catches occasional channel and flathead catfish, but blue cats are the main attraction, and any time a rod bows on the Santee Cooper lakes, the fish at the terminal end might weigh 6 pounds or 60 pounds.

Savvy anglers know they can catch summertime crappie in the shallows with the right presentation. Read on and learn when to use which type of presentation.

When the summer heat is on, many crappie anglers head for deep water because they believe crappie go deep to seek the comfort of cooler water. While several anglers try vertical jigging techniques for deep crappie, four panfish experts head in the opposite direction to catch summertime crappie.  

“That goes against some people’s beliefs that crappie go deep during the summertime, but they don’t because they are going to go where the baitfish are, and that is really the biggest key,” Lake of the Ozarks guide Terry Blankenship said.  “They are just going to follow the bait.”

Blankenship and other veteran crappie anglers believe the presence of baitfish keep many crappie in the shallows, even in the scorching heat of summer.

The heat of the summer sun leads bass to find some of the hardest to reach hiding spots all year, especially if grass is plentiful in your lake or river. When grass and grass mats are present, it can be an almost impossible search to find and catch big bass. Today, we are going to identify three objectives to identify, rig up, and effectively punch grass to find quality bass during the hot summertime.

A drop shot rig is highly effective for catching bass during summer. However, the best specific rigging and presentations vary by situation. Read on and refine your summer drop-shotting game!

During the summer months, former Bassmaster Elite Series pro Frank Scalish always has at least one rod on his boat’s deck rigged with a drop shot. It matters not where in North America he happens to be fishing nor whether he’s after largemouth, smallmouth or spotted bass.

Summertime drop-shotting consistently keeps Scalish in touch with bass, especially when more aggressive tactics strike out. However, his drop-shot rig and how he works it vary depending on where he is fishing and the species of bass that swim there.

Paying attention to prevalent forage and selecting bait styles and colors to match findings can yield big dividends when you are crappie fishing.

“Itty Bit?” Gary Dollahon asked, with a tone that suggested he already knew the answer.

“Of course,” I replied.

Dollahon, who is brand manager for Bobby Garland Crappie Baits, had put us on some bridge crappie at Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula, and an Itty Bit Slab Hunt’R was carrying the crappie-catching load for me. I was fishing a tandem rig, with a regular sized Baby Shad Swim’R in front and an Itty Bit trailing, and virtually every fish was hitting the diminutive offering. I didn’t count, but I’m guessing I caught 25 of 30 crappie during a couple of hours of bridge fishing, and all except one were on the Itty Bit Slab Hunt’R.

We saw schools of tiny minnows around every bridge pillar and around other cover throughout that day, so while I can’t get inside the fish’s heads, it makes sense that the 1 ¼-inch bait had greater appeal because it more accurately matched the forage fish the crappie had been eating.

Don’t buy into summer doldrums talk. Late summer offers some of the best jigging spoon action of the year, with a range of presentations prompting excellent fish-catching action.

First a disclaimer: If you don’t like multi-species fishing and always need to know what’s at the end of your line, the summer spoon bite might not be for you. While you can target stripers, white bass or hybrids based on waterways and locations and typically will catch more of the target species than fish of other kinds, it’s not uncommon to catch 10 species in a day with a summer spoon-fishing approach, and any fish that wallops a spoon could turn out to be a 1-pound crappie or a 50-pound flathead.

That noted, jigging spoons provide spectacular opportunities to catch the “true bass” species (stripers, white bass and striper/white bass hybrids) during late summer, when these fish are chasing big schools of shad and herring in open water. Jigging spoons “match the hatch” very effectively and have built-in versatility that makes them solid matches for most summer scenarios with these species.

If you choose the right lure styles for the situation and go at the right times, summer topwater fishing can be outstanding. Here’s what you need to know.

Late summer can be a tumultuous time to fish due to ultra-hot temps and uncooperative fish, which seem to turn their nose up to every presentation possible. The one saving grace is the topwater action you can find early in the morning or late in the evening, when bass have their short feeding periods. These periods give way to some intense action, if the right lures are chosen for the given situation. Detailed below are my top picks, by action, for late summer topwater bassin’!

Learn the techniques of four crankbait trolling experts and increase your summer crappie fishing success.

“And the Bandits Stroll Away” might sound like a country song title. Instead, it’s what Arkansas crappie guide Payton Usrey tells boat guests when the final trolling lure is in the water and it’s time for fish-catching action.

Bandits are a brand of shad-shaped crankbaits, popular with Usrey and scores of avid crappie anglers who enjoy summer trolling for the species. They rattle and have a wide wobble when retrieved.

Strolling, in fishing talk, refers to various slow-trolling techniques in which a boat’s electric trolling motor is used to move the watercraft along in a deliberate, controlled manner for presenting lures.