Jacksonville Progress
July 12, 2008 03:03 pm
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By Jerry Miller
Outdoor Columnist
When most anglers head out to their favorite fishing hole in the summer they focus on mainly fishing deep.
There are a lot of bass that are caught deep in the summer, but not all bass are deep all the time.
I’ve found that on most lakes there is a shallow water bite going on if you know when and where to look.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but bass can often be caught shallow, usually the first hour of the morning, late afternoon and at night. A good example is the Florida bass. Florida bass tolerate warmer, shallower water than our native bass. Florida bass can tolerate a wide range of water clarities and bottom types. They also prefer water temperatures from 65 to 85 degrees and are usually found at depths less than 20 feet.
The secret is to look around and find areas of the lake where you can see shad, shore line minnows called silver sides, bream or crawfish. I’ve found one small cove on Lake Jacksonville that always has a few decent fish at daybreak situated around concrete retainer walls and boat houses.
I’ve had good luck fishing a Spook Jr. and a small, three-inch shad color jerk bait. There is just a small section of the cove, usually in the mouth of the cove, that harbors these fish. None of the bass are large, but they run from one to two and a half pounds and are fun to catch. Occasionally I will catch an 18-inch fish on the Spook Jr.
From time to time I will see bass chasing minnows up against the retainer wall. They head the bait fish down the face of the retainer wall. It’s easy pickings for them.
Larger bass in deep water
I believe the majority of the larger bass remain deep during the summer, but from time to time they will forage in the shallows, particularly under low light conditions.
Also, you can go launch at the dam on Lake Palestine at daylight and fish the shallow grass line around points and mouth of coves and catch bass up to three pounds on top water baits. This year there is a lot of shallow flooded grass on Lake Palestine . Baitfish is real active in the grass early in the morning and so are the bass. You have to get there early to be successful. The first hour of daylight is the best.
Most of the lakes in our area are full. Some are slightly high and the bass are taking advantage of the shallow water cover.
The best fishing I’ve experienced lately is on Lake Fork . I fished with Frank Lusk last Tuesday, and we boated 31 nice size catfish up to about 6 pounds in about 7 hours of fishing. The action was good and steady.
Lusk likes to anchor up his boat in about 35 feet of water near a creek channel. He “chums” the area heavily with some sour corn and range cubes and then baits up his treble hook with catfish bait, leaves the bait near the bottom, and gets ready for action.
Whenever the bite subsided he would chum the area with more bait. The fish would go back to biting. Lake Fork must have thousands and thousands of catfish that roam up and down the deep creeks looking for something to feed on.
It was a great trip with non-stop action. I do very little catfishing, but that was fun.
Jerry Miller can be contacted at: gonefishing@suddenlink.net
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