Fishing Report August 7 2016

Species: Largemouth Bass Water Depth: 8-25 FOW Water Temperature: 78-80 degrees Technique: Plastics/Texas rigged Weather: Sun/Breezy/85 degree air temps Water temperatures are fairly high at this time of the summer and in the shallow waters, the weed growth is getting out of control with the drought that we are experiencing. By working deep water structure, this is giving you an opportunity at catching better sized fish that many anglers aren't even bothering. Many anglers' fish shallow throughout the open water season and if you understand how to find and fish deep water structure, this is another advantage for you. Finding these structures, if on a new lake, takes idling around and watching your electronics closely for changes in the bottom contours. Once you locate these key areas, set a waypoint on your GPS or throw out a buoy for your reference point. Now you can fish this area very thoroughly from fishing deep side and coming up the hump or fishing on top and fishing off of the sides into deep water. Either way, if the fish are there they typically will take the baits that you are presenting as they are not seeing nearly the numbers that the shallow water fish are seeing. The lake I was fishing has a mid-lake hump structure that one of the humps is in 25 feet of water and comes up to 12 feet on top, while the other one next to it, is in 20 feet of water and tops out at 6 feet deep. The deeper hump has minimal weed growth compared to the shallower one, but both of these were holding fish. The bait that was working on this trip was a Northland Tackle's Impulse 5 Jerk Minnow in a Smelt color pattern that was Texas rigged on a 3/0 hook with a 1/4 oz Kenders Tungsten Flipping weight. Having the boat positioned off the side in deeper water, making long casts across these humps was how we were enticing the bites. Working the bait slowly over the hump and when you would encounter either weeds or rocks, work it very slowly over and through these types of items as they were key to the fish that were relating to them compared to the more barren areas that didn't have these things. You may not get that many bites doing this, but typically when you do, the fish have a much better quality to them. If you want to catch numbers of fish, fishing shallow is typically what always works but size wise you will be dealing with a smaller fish. If you get to fish these deep water structures, you may not get the quantities of fish, but your quality will definitely go up. It does take some practice as now you are fishing with a lot more line out, but if you get comfortable with it and put some time into it, you have just added another piece of information for where to look for catching fish on tougher days.