Featured Stories

Learn why downsizing crappie fishing baits can help you catch more fish during summer.

Never say never.

“Never” did crappie guide and host of The Crappie Connection Brad Chappell ever see himself doing anything in August other than long-lining jigs or pulling crankbaits, two trolling techniques that he helped develop and popularize for catching slabs in the hottest months of the year. And never did he dream his summer catch rates would nearly double because of using different crappie fishing baits and tactics. Today, though, you’re likely to find him on Mississippi’s Ross Barnett Reservoir sitting still and casting Bobby Garland Itty Bits to cover.

“It’s true.” Chappell said, “Things just clicked last summer, and tossing these little baits is my new favorite summertime way to fish, and a method my clients love because they’re at the front of the boat and fully engaged in the fun of the action, from casting to catching.”

Learn to locate summer bass on offshore structure and how to use deep-diving crankbaits to tap into hot fishing action throughout summer.

The heat of summer delivers a delightful thing to anglers. Bass schooled up on offshore structure. These fish will succumb to various lures, but nothing fires up a school quite like a crankbait! Master offshore bass fishing by learning to locate bass on deep structure and using deep diving crankbaits to tap into outstanding fishing action.

All About Location

The best deep diving crankbait fishing locations couple ideal structure with favorable cover. And, yes, there’s a difference.

Bass use cover wherever they can find it – shallow, deep or in between. Brushpiles, aquatic vegetation, trees, boulders, docks and even the occasional sunken automobile provide predator species like largemouth and smallmouth bass with concealment for ambushing baitfish and other forage, along with other advantages.

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.

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’!

The fish pictured above isn’t the largest I have caught in my short span of searching for these beautiful green fish, but it is by-far the most memorable bass I will ever catch due to the story behind it.

Bobby Garland’s Itty Bit lures provide highly dependable summer action from several kinds of fish and lend themselves to a variety of presentations.

“This one must be a bass,” my son, Nathaniel, called out as fish he was battling surged against his ultralight gear. I paddled my kayak nearer to get a better look and photos. “Actually, it’s a giant bream!” he said when he got the fish in sight.

A few minutes later he slid his hand beneath a pound-plus shellcracker (officially, a redear sunfish), lifted it into the kayak, and the tried to figure out the best way to get a grip around the fish’s big body. We got some pictures before he returned it to the water and then returned to casting a tiny bait toward shoreline cover to see what else he could catch.

I had been telling Nathaniel about Bobby Garland’s new Itty Bit Slab Hunt’R and showing him photos of bluegills, yellow perch, largemouth bass and more – even including another big shellcracker that I’d caught from a different spot on the same lake a week prior. Finally, he was getting to see for himself and was enjoying the fast action. His big shellcracker was one about 50 fish of a handful of species we caught in a few hours of casting Itty Bits from kayaks that afternoon.

As hot as the summer sun can be, the crankbait bite can be even hotter given the right conditions! In today’s blog we will go over three tips for summer crankbait fishing to help you find fish, pick out the right plug, and stay on a school of fish for as long as possible.

Learn the best baits and presentations for calling bass from different types of vegetation.

Green vegetation in bass waters creates habitat-rich environments, which creates a common problem for bass fishermen: It all looks fishy. Rather than being overwhelmed by all the visible possibilities, anglers do well to learn to identify those areas with the highest probability of producing bass. Part of the solution is learning to accurately cast the appropriate lures to the vegetation that is most apt to produce a strike.

There are four major types of aquatic vegetation: floating, submerged, emergent and algae.  Let’s look at several specific varieties and examine how to go about fishing them.