For hot weather lunkers, tempt them at point-blank range
Many people claim Louisiana does not have four seasons, but it does. Football season, duck season, crawfish season and blazing furnace season!
In July, when even the air seems to sweat, many people won’t move far from their air conditioners. Even on scorching days, anglers could experience hot action, meteorologically and figuratively speaking, if they know where to look.
Like people in their air-conditioned homes, bass seek cool places. In the summer, bass cling tightly to any shady structure and won’t move very far. Anglers almost need to knock them on the head to make them bite. Find the coolest water to find the bass in July.
Bass living in reservoirs can go deep to find comfortable temperatures. In South Louisiana, they won’t find much deep water so they must locate shade. Anything that casts a shadow on the water attracts bass, even in extreme shallows.
Look for heavy cover
Cypress trees grow out far from shore in many Louisiana waters. These flooded forests provide excellent summer cover. Trees overhanging the water create shade. Bass also cling tight to dock and bridge pilings, fallen trees, stumps and other shady places. When bass hold snug to cover, precise lure placement means more than lure selection or color. By flipping, anglers can place baits accurately at point-blank range.
“In Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, the water gets hot, so fish relate to cover to find some relief from the heat,” said Greg Hackney, a Bassmaster Classic veteran from Gonzales. “We live in a good place for hot weather flipping because we have so much heavy cover. What makes flipping so productive is that anglers can hit cover with pinpoint accuracy and fish vertically. After hitting the target, let the bait fall right through the cover.”
To flip, use a long rod, almost like a cane pole to place temptations accurately. Strip off some line and hold the excess loosely in one hand while swinging the bait toward the target. As the bait nears the target, release the excess line to allow the lure to pull it out. If done correctly, the bait lands precisely and slips into the water with barely a ripple. A good flipper can drop a bait into the tightest pockets and probe every minuscule opening in a grass mat or other cover.
“Flipping really started with cane poles long ago,” Hackney said. “Let the bait sink to the bottom. Most often, bass hit on the fall. At the bottom, hop the bait three or four times. In the summer, a bass will typically make the line jump. If the line jumps, stops or slows down, set the hook. Don’t spend too much time soaking a lure in the same spot.”
What to use
When bass hold tight to cover on hot days, they don’t feed aggressively. However, they might slurp something that almost tickles its nose. Also, they vigorously defend their little cool oasis. The sudden incursion by a foreign object that happens to look delicious could incite a quick reaction strike. During the summer, bass usually hit reaction baits immediately or not at all.
“Flipping is a simple technique,” said Darold Gleason, a professional bass angler from Many. “It’s all about picking apart a lot of cover. Hit every pocket. I like a ¾- to 1-ounce jig for summer fishing. When bass burrow into cover waiting to ambush bluegill, I want to get that reaction bite. Let the bait free-fall all the way down. When it lands, lift the rod one time to see if a fish grabbed it. If not, hop it one time and see if it will bite. If not, drop the bait into another pocket.”
For flipping, many anglers use jigs sweetened with plastic trailers that mimic baitfish or crawfish. These baits look like natural prey and easily slip through dense cover. They work particularly effectively around wood, such as stumps, standing timber, flood brush or fallen trees. Also flip baits around dock or bridge pilings and vegetation, anything that might hold bass in the summer.
“Probably the biggest thing about summertime jigging in Louisiana is the jig weight,” Hackney said. “We need heavy jigs to get through thick summer cover with a faster sink rate. I like a ¾- to 1-ounce Strike King Hack Attack jig. For trailers, I only use Strike King Rage Craws in the summer. Paired with that heavy jig, it has great swimming action and looks like a bluegill or crawfish racing through the cover. In the summer, I use bluegill colors because bass feed more heavily upon bluegill and other baitfish at that time.”
Docks
Docks line many Louisiana shorelines. Docks not only offer bass shade, but overhead protection from avian predators. Multiple pilings and supporting structures provide superb cover. Many dock owners create additional cover by building nearby brush piles to attract bream, crappie and other species. Bass feast upon these creatures.
“If I can’t find grass, I’ll look for docks with brush piles,” Gleason said. “Docks provide bass with abundant shade and cover so they hang out waiting to ambush bluegill. A downed tree also creates great cover for flipping, especially in the shallower lakes. In all the cypress lakes in Louisiana and shallower lakes with docks, bass will use the shade under that cover to keep out of the sunshine.”
Moored boats also create rarely fished shade. Sometimes, boats sit unused for years. Algae grows on the ropes, hulls, trim tabs and lower units. That growth feeds minnows and other morsels, attracting larger fish.
Regardless of cover, place the bait as close to it as possible. Hit the shadiest parts first, but whenever practical, fish completely around any cover, especially isolated wood in deeper water. Although bass in the summer normally prefer to stay in the shade, they could hold anywhere. Perhaps a cooling flow washes into one side or bait congregates in that area.
While most people flip jigs, Texas-rigged tubes, worms or similar baits also work well. Tubes slip easily through tight cover. Short and compact, but chunkier than worms, tubes resemble miniature squids. Hollow tubes let out fish-attracting bubbles as they sink. Anglers can also insert ratting devices or scent dispensers into the hollow bodies for more enticement.
Thick vegetation
Across the Sportsman’s Paradise, predominantly in the marshes and along the rivers of South Louisiana, thick vegetation blankets many waters. Boaters hate waterway-clogging hyacinths, but fish stay under them. Aquatic grasses form massive mats. Surface vegetation blocks the broiling sun, lowering water temperatures significantly beneath them. Thick plants also give fish much-needed oxygen because hot water can turn hypoxic.
“At Toledo Bend, I fish the deepest hydrilla during the hottest months,” Gleason said. “I’ll flip a ¾- or 1-ounce jig, depending on how heavy the cover is. I also use Texas rigs. I like Strike King Rage Bugs. Sometimes I flip it. Sometimes, I use a punch skirt. For colors, I go with black and blue swirl or blue craw, which is green pumpkin with blue swirl.”
Many people fish around grassy edges, but on the hottest days, the biggest bass regularly burrow into thick weeds, even in extremely shallow water. Hunkered down in their vegetative fortresses, lunkers won’t move unless they see something tempting and easy to snatch. Aim for tiny pockets between the thickest vegetation. Skilled flippers can hit every opening.
“It’s all about getting the bait down to the fish,” Hackney said. “Bass are more reactive in the summer than the winter. Sometimes, vegetation grows so thick that we can’t get jigs through it, especially in South Louisiana. Then, I go to a Texas rig with a Strike King Magnum Rage Bug. It has a jig-like profile with a lot of action.”
Big fish
When the subtle approach fails, anglers might need to take more dynamic action and punch through the densest grass mats. Some anglers use jigheads weighing 1.5 to 2 ounces. Toss the bait up in the air and let the heavy sinker crash down through the roof, right into Mr. Mossbacks’ living room. That sudden home invasion could evoke a devastating reaction strike.
Since the biggest bass like the thickest places, use rods with considerable backbone and tough line to yank big fish from entangling cover. Gleason uses a 7-foot, 6-inch to 8-foot Falcon heavy-action flipping rod with a high-speed reel. Hackney prefers his Signature Series Lew’s pitching rod in 7-foot, 6-inch length, mated to a Lew’s HyperMag reel in 8.3:1 gear ratio loaded with 50- to 65-pound braided line.
“For fishing grass, heavy vegetation, lily pads and hydrilla, I like 50- to 65-pound Seaguar braid,” Gleason said. “I don’t like flipping braid around docks because the line gets hung on the poles so I use 20- or 25-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon.”
Flipping heavy cover can tempt big fish that other anglers can’t reach. Dropping large jigs into nearly impenetrable cover at close range might not elicit as many strikes as some other lures, but this technique normally produces larger than average bass. Anytime a bait sinks into thick cover could result in the pot-belly lunker of a lifetime.
