Summer is here – what’s working??

It’s June 21 and post-spawn (and post-Cottonwood) so officially Summer now. Tell us what’s working – depth, lures, patterns, water temps, lakes, rivers, etc. Have a great, long summer of fishing!

I’ll let you know tomorrow afternoon. Heading out to see how good the neko, jigworm, dropshot and big t-rigged worm bite is. Was hoping to have some new rods in by today but they aren’t quite done yet. Maybe for the tourney this weekend.

“Was hoping to have some new rods in by today but they aren’t quite done yet. Maybe for the tourney this weekend.”

Order some custom rods from Thorne?

Nice work on the new thread Fryer.

I was out on Saturday locally for about 3.5 hours and did OK. Weed growth is definitely behind last year’s pace but coming along now. The water seems pretty clear. Likely because there isn’t much of an algae bloom yet.

I only boated 4 bass but they were all quality fish. A bluegill colored jerk bait was the lure of choice. I just happened to still have it tied on from May and thought I’d give it a toss a couple times. Third cast, a nice 17 incher hit it. I was slightly surprised, as I consider a jerk bait to be more of a cold water pre-spawn technique. I’ll keep throwing it as long as it continues to work. Water temp was 72 by me.

Drop shot, jig worm, ned rig and other finesse tactics can go away. I prefer to power fish. If I have to get those slow, boring, soft plastic lures out then its not going to be my kind of day.

What’s working? Me too much, I’d even take a bass fishing trip at this point! Carry on…

FryDog62 wrote:

“Was hoping to have some new rods in by today but they aren’t quite done yet. Maybe for the tourney this weekend.”

Order some custom rods from Thorne?

Trying out some of TUCR open water lineup. Been using a casting rod since the beginning of the year and really like it, and have two spinning and one more casting being built.

gimruis wrote:

Nice work on the new thread Fryer.

Drop shot, jig worm, ned rig and other finesse tactics can go away. I prefer to power fish. If I have to get those slow, boring, soft plastic lures out then its not going to be my kind of day.

I used to think the same thing. I love power fishing but after getting beat by finesse techniques in tournaments week in and week out, I made myself learn them and fish them. I’ve caught more big bass in the last two years with those techniques that power fishing ever got me in the years before that. Honestly. Probably more fish too because once it gets to June, they start schooling up in the deeper water.

mahtofire14 wrote:

I love power fishing but after getting beat by finesse techniques in tournaments week in and week out, I made myself learn them and fish them.

I don’t doubt that at all. Luckily, I’m not in any competition (yet, anyways) so there is no urgency to deviate to it. I know I have to do it sometimes to be effective, I just don’t want to. lol

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>mahtofire14 wrote:</div>
I love power fishing but after getting beat by finesse techniques in tournaments week in and week out, I made myself learn them and fish them.

I don’t doubt that at all. Luckily, I’m not in any competition (yet, anyways) so there is no urgency to deviate to it. I know I have to do it sometimes to be effective, I just don’t want to. lol

I get it. I was as against it as anyone out there.

Drop shot for me. Topwater in the evenings. Docks perking up a bit.

gimruis wrote:

Nice work on the new thread Fryer.

Drop shot, jig worm, ned rig and other finesse tactics can go away. I prefer to power fish. If I have to get those slow, boring, soft plastic lures out then its not going to be my kind of day.

You and I are on totally different ends on this one. I prefer the slow, boring, soft plastic lures fishing over the chuck and reel fishing any day. Different strokes for different fokes !!!!

How did you go about learning to fish deep? Are you talking outer weedline fish or deep suspended, etc.

Its something i want to get better at, but seems like I go deep for 1 hr or so without a bite, back in I go LOL

I hope to find out soon. Have not been on the water chasing Bass for Several weeks now. It was a strange and bad spring for Bass fishing around here. Hope to find the early summer weedline pattern in place when I get out next. Mother nature seems to be still hating us fishermen here in Central Minnesota. The wind just keeps Blowing and Blowing. I’ve got a new custom dropshot rod finished that I need to get to St. Louis Park to pick up. I dropped off a rod with my buddy who builds rods to have a few Eyes replace. He noticed the blank was damaged beyond repair, so I decided to have him build me a new one. Looking forward to getting it and trying it out soon.

dewman90 wrote:

How did you go about learning to fish deep? Are you talking outer weedline fish or deep suspended, etc.

Its something i want to get better at, but seems like I go deep for 1 hr or so without a bite, back in I go LOL

When I’m talking about fishing deep its mostly deeper weedlines, but sometimes Deeper rock structure as well. Deep can mean different things to different fishermen. In normal years the weedlines grow out to about 14-18 FOW in my area. Some years it only grows to 10 Ft. and others it grows to 20 Ft. Like others have said, the good thing about fishing deeper structure is that fish often school up in larger schools. Once you locate them its not uncommon to catch 10 or more fish in a small area in a rather short time. The shallow game is more often the one here one there kind of thing. The best way to get started fishing deeper weedlines in to setup a texas rigged worm or a Jigworm and get on the outer weedline and just cover water. Once you catch a fish, either put down a waypoint of throw out a buoy. Most often where there is one fish there are several. once the bite slows down on the Texas rig or Jig worm, switch to a dropshot or Neko rig and you will often catch several other fish. Once you get several waypoints down it often just a matter of setting up a milk run from spot to spot the following times out. often fish hold in the same location from now till late August or early Sept.

It’s been spotty for me lately as well deep shallow and in between as soon as I think I have a pattern nothing

fishthumper wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>dewman90 wrote:</div>
How did you go about learning to fish deep? Are you talking outer weedline fish or deep suspended, etc.

Its something i want to get better at, but seems like I go deep for 1 hr or so without a bite, back in I go LOL

When I’m talking about fishing deep its mostly deeper weedlines, but sometimes Deeper rock structure as well. Deep can mean different things to different fishermen. In normal years the weedlines grow out to about 14-18 FOW in my area. Some years it only grows to 10 Ft. and others it grows to 20 Ft. Like others have said, the good thing about fishing deeper structure is that fish often school up in larger schools. Once you locate them its not uncommon to catch 10 or more fish in a small area in a rather short time. The shallow game is more often the one here one there kind of thing. The best way to get started fishing deeper weedlines in to setup a texas rigged worm or a Jigworm and get on the outer weedline and just cover water. Once you catch a fish, either put down a waypoint of throw out a buoy. Most often where there is one fish there are several. once the bite slows down on the Texas rig or Jig worm, switch to a dropshot or Neko rig and you will often catch several other fish. Once you get several waypoints down it often just a matter of setting up a milk run from spot to spot the following times out. often fish hold in the same location from now till late August or early Sept.

thanks that is very helpful

fishthumper wrote:

You and I are on totally different ends on this one. I prefer the slow, boring, soft plastic lures fishing over the chuck and reel fishing any day. Different strokes for different fokes !!!!

I do what is effective. There are days when a slow finesse approach isn’t required and you can catch a lot of fish on a faster, more aggressive approach. I simply prefer that style of fishing. A bright warm sunny day in summer generally does not produce fish with a run n gun approach, so I have to fish how you describe. I try to target days with low pressure instead of high pressure…like cloudy and/or rainy days. You may notice that when I post photos the back ground is not usually a bright sunny bluebird day. Quite honestly, my preferred way to fish is with a topwater but for years the topwater bite has been almost non-existent for me.

My chuck n wind approach comes from musky fishing. I do a fair amount of that and there really isn’t an ultra finesse approach to muskie fishing unless you’re sitting there with a giant bobber and a sucker on a quick strike rig, which is more of a fall pattern anyways (and is something I prefer to avoid doing at all costs).

I’ll second what fishthumper has said and add this. I was drawn to the finesse game, and specifically dropshot, when Seth Feider won the first Elite event on Mille Lacs. Watched a ton of videos on how to set them up and how to fish them. My first time using it in league 5 years ago put 6 fish in the boat in about a 50 yard stretch of water. The 2 largest were over 20″. I was sold. It is usually a deeper weed edge technique, but not always. I really like it for isolated weed clumps in the mid depths and have had it work really well in 5 fow at the edges of the pads. Rather than trying to locate the schools of bass, I’ve often had an easier time locating the schools of sunfish first. You find them, and the bigguns are not far away. What drew me to the spot 5 years ago were the sunfish getting pushed to the surface and busting in large schools.

In the lakes I’ve fished the last couple weeks, the sunfish were still shallow. So that deep weedline bite has been mostly non-existent. Hoping that changes soon. I’ll be looking for it tomorrow night!

Joe Jarl wrote:

In the lakes I’ve fished the last couple weeks, the sunfish were still shallow.

I actually saw a fair amount of them on beds recently. I even tried pitching a ned rig in there and of course the machine gun style tick-tick-tick occurred as expected.

Joe Jarl wrote:

I’ve often had an easier time locating the schools of sunfish first. You find them, and the bigguns are not far away. What drew me to the spot 5 years ago were the sunfish getting pushed to the surface and busting in large schools.
In the lakes I’ve fished the last couple weeks, the sunfish were still shallow. So that deep weedline bite has been mostly non-existent. Hoping that changes soon. I’ll be looking for it tomorrow night!

Yes the Sunfish pattern is often the key in deeper water. I could not tell you the # of times I’ve had sunfish explode on the surface and throw a jigworm into the spot and hammered the bass feeding on them. Most often those sunfish explosions on the surface is caused by the bass working together to force the small sunfish to the surface where they can then attack. When bass attack like that they often just stun or injure as many sunfish as possible as fast as possible and then feed on the ones injured. This is where throwing into that area with a jigworm or dropshot often works. The bass think its one of the sunfish they injured.

Caught bass with just about everything I threw at them this morning. Even caught some on a t rigged 6 inch lizard! Hopefully the bite will stay good for my tournament on Saturday. Should catch em, but gotta get the bigs to bite.

My buddy filmed this 30 second video yesterday morning while I was fishing mid-lake rock humps walking a Cover Pop. 72 degree water temps near Park Rapids. First 2 casts of the day, and 2 smallies. It’s summer, time to enjoy – –

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FryDog62 wrote:

My buddy filmed this 30 second video yesterday morning while I was fishing mid-lake rock humps walking a Cover Pop. 72 degree water temps near Park Rapids. First 2 casts of the day, and 2 smallies. It’s summer, time to enjoy – –

Yep, the best fishing of the year in my opinion. Still surprises me to say that when it used to be when I couldn’t buy a bite.

Was able to finally get back on the water Bass fishing yesterday evening. All the conditions seemed to be in our favor. The lake seemed to be setting up as it normally would be this time of the year. One thing I noticed right away that shocked me was how warm the water temp was. It read 88 Deg. I hoped it would go down some when we got away from the landing some, but it really didn’t. It was between 86-88 everywhere we went. That seems really high. But I guess several near 100 Deg. days will do that. We hit our normal best spot on the lake right away. The weed growth looked good, maybe a little behind but not much. The fishing was tough at best. Ran the other normal hot spots and more of the same. The few fish we did manage were on either a Jig worm worked as close to the heavy weed edge or on a Texas rig fished deeper into the heavy cover. We could not catch any fish any distance away from the weed edge. The hot temps and bright sky’s I’m sure played a roll in that. The one thing really missing was any panfish in the area we were fishing. I think that was the main reason for the poor fishing. I hope the sunfish spawn wraps up soon and they move out to the deeper weed edges. May hit this lake again tomorrow or Sun. morning. It tends to be a better morning lake anyway.

Fished an Annandale area lake last night for league. Went to our favorite spot for bass and found what we were looking for. Weed line was out to about 12′. Weeds were in much better shape than last year when they sprayed most of this area. Concentrated on the end of large weedy flat that extends quite a ways into the lake with deep water adjacent. Caught our 6 keepers in about an hour and all but one came on a dropshot 6″ Yum Dinger rigged wacky. Largest was 18 1/2″. Water temp was 75-77 with about 3′ of clarity. Sunfish and baitfish were abundant in the area. Not the greatest pic, but this is what I look for.

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Joe Jarl wrote:

Fished an Annandale area lake last night for league. Went to our favorite spot for bass and found what we were looking for. Weed line was out to about 12′. Weeds were in much better shape than last year when they sprayed most of this area. Concentrated on the end of large weedy flat that extends quite a ways into the lake with deep water adjacent. Caught our 6 keepers in about an hour and all but one came on a dropshot 6″ Yum Dinger rigged wacky. Largest was 18 1/2″. Water temp was 75-77 with about 3′ of clarity. Sunfish and baitfish were abundant in the area. Not the greatest pic, but this is what I look for.

Nice report. You bring up a good point about spraying. With the delayed spring, I think a lot of spraying is going to happen on many of our favorite lakes now before the 4th of July week.

fishthumper wrote:

It read 88 Deg.

I think you read that incorrectly. I haven’t seen a water temperature here in Minnesota that warm in my entire life. Either that or your ducer is reading incorrectly.

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>fishthumper wrote:</div>
It read 88 Deg.

I think you read that incorrectly. I haven’t seen a water temperature here in Minnesota that warm in my entire life. Either that or your ducer is reading incorrectly.

I thought it was crazy high as well . Both of the new hummingbird graphs that have read right till now both read the same. About a 1/2 Deg. Different. Going to be out again in the AM and will verify

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>fishthumper wrote:</div>
It read 88 Deg.

I think you read that incorrectly. I haven’t seen a water temperature here in Minnesota that warm in my entire life. Either that or your ducer is reading incorrectly.

You need to get out more!! Last summer my shallow muddy lakes were in the high 80’s and low 90’s for most of the summer.
Its definitely possible to have surface temps in that range after the heat we’ve had recently.

grubson wrote:

You need to get out more!! Last summer my shallow muddy lakes were in the high 80’s and low 90’s for most of the summer.
Its definitely possible to have surface temps in that range after the heat we’ve had recently.

I agree. This lake I’m talking about had surface temps in the upper 80’s to lower 90’s for a long period ( Like 3 weeks last summer ) It is a small muddy Prairie type of lake. Although it does have a small deep water area in the middle ( 60Ft + ) This lake is often 8-10 Degree;s warmer than other local lakes in the hot summer months