Several weeks have passed since my Top 20 finish at the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Cayuga Lake, and I have to tell you, I’ve appreciated the downtime. One reason — a big one for me — is that I’ve been enjoying a lot of family activities.
We have four family birthdays in July, so that has brought us all together for some fun times. Also, one of the really cool things I got to go do was visit my nephew Tucker Pennell, who was drafted by the San Diego Padres’ rookie team. They play in Phoenix, so we went out there to watch one of his games.
Aside from that, I’ve mostly stayed home. When your work involves traveling the nation, sometimes your vacation is getting to stay home for several weeks. One of my personal hobbies is working in my yard, so I’ve spent a lot of time cutting the grass and caring for the flowers.
During this break, I haven’t spent much time on the water because after Cayuga, I drove my boat to Maryland and left it at a friend’s house so I’d have it on-site for the Elite event on the Potomac in August.
During this time, I’ve been mostly landlocked. I do have plenty of friends and boats that I can borrow, so I’ve gotten out a few times, but it has mostly been to test new baits. They haven’t really been fishing trips, they’ve been research trips.
Going without actually fishing for several weeks has given me the yearning to get back out there and spend a day patterning some fish. In that regard, leaving my boat in Maryland was a calculated move because I knew if I had my boat here, I’d spend a lot more time on the water.
Clearly, any time you spend on the water helps you keep your skills sharp, but leaving my boat somewhere else has given me cabin fever. Instead of treating practice at the Potomac as just another day on the water, I’m going to bring a lot of enthusiasm.
Right now, I’m going stir crazy, and I am so ready for that first day of practice on the Potomac River you can’t imagine. I’ll tell you how bad it’s gotten: On our trip to Arizona, I caught myself looking at a bush on the side of the road and thinking to myself, “If that bush had 5 feet of water on it, where would that bass be sitting?”
That’s literally how it is.
Now, when we look at fishing this time of year, the one word that comes to mind is “stifling.” The heat can be nearly unbearable for anglers, and it’s not much different for the fish.
When you look at an area, try to picture it without water and ask yourself, “If I was a bass, where would I be?” Shade is the most likely answer, but current also matters because that’s like a fresh breeze for summer bass.
In the southern U.S., where it’s been hot for a while, we have to remember that the second half of summer is different than the first half. After the postspawn, the fish initially concentrate over humps and ledges, but the second half of summer often find them scattered in shallower water.
That’s mostly due to the thermocline. When fish can’t find comfortable, or even livable water out deep, they’ll move up and scatter.
In this scenario, I love to fish shallow, isolated targets such as a fence row, laydown or a lone dock. You may not catch 20 bass on a spot, but you can catch one or two, leave for a couple of hours and come back later to catch a couple more.
Even though I’ve said “shallow,” that’s relevant to the area I’m fishing. Here’s a good rule of thumb: The clearer the water, the deeper the thermocline sets up; the dirtier the water, the shallower the thermocline sets up.
So, when I refer to a shallow bass, that fish will be deeper in clean water than he is in dirtier water. To find exactly where that thermocline is setting up, idle over deeper water with the gain on your graph turned way up. You’ll see a little fuzzy line covering a 2- to 5-foot range at a particular depth.
You’ll be able to see that thermocline because there’s a collection of particulate matter that will reflect on your graph. Usually, this time of year, I’ll start targeting areas shallower than that.
When I’m targeting these shallow, isolated spots, I’ll throw a mix of Bandit squarebills, Booyah Pad Crasher frogs, Booyah jigs and even a buzzbait. Especially around shallow grass and laydowns, I’ll fish that bait all day long.
I like throwing a buzzbait because even if the fish don’t bite, they’ll often show themselves. That allows me to pitch back to that spot with a 7-inch YUM ribbontail worm and hopefully entice that fish to bite.
Sometimes one bait will activate a fish that may not have responded to your follow-up bait if you threw that one first. But if you can figure out that combination, you’ll catch fish in the heat of summer.