Finessing hot weather bass

Published 8:30 am Friday, July 16, 2010

After launching my Bass Tracker on a recent hot afternoon I stopped on a submerged hump that had a few sunken brushtops and began fishing. As soon as I positioned my boat directly over a brush pile in 12 feet of water I pitched a Kickin Darter Jr. out and let it fall straight down into the tree. Picking up on my slack line I felt a slight bit of tension so I reared back on the hook and slammed it home into the jaws of a finicky hot weather bass! The small hand-poured finesse bait was just right for this occasion and I quickly changed gears from fishing for bass, to catching bass!

    Continuing along the submerged hump I pitched the lure a few feet further and let it freefall onto another portion of the hump. This time I detected a twitch of the line and slight tick just before the line started moving to the side. I set the hook once again and another lunker bass exploded from the top like a stick of dynamite. It took all of the finesse and power that the rod and line had to coax the bass from the wooden structure, but my equipment was up to the task at hand and I landed the hungry bass.

Something new

    Though I couldn’t see every piece of brush on the submerged hump I knew the approximate location of the structure and bass so I continued to feed them more of my Kickin Darters. While the bass are always lethargic and finicky during our hot weather months, they’re also leery of striking the same old assortment of lures that they’ve seen a thousand times over. After they’ve bit the bullet a few times they don’t want to feel the taste of the steel hook again and become much more finicky.

    Whenever I’m fishing during hot weather or on highly pressured lakes I usually try to give the fish a look at something new, and that’s not always easy to do. My latest foray with the Kickin Darter Jrs came as a result of picking up a small pack of the hand poured baits during a fall outdoor show. Of course, I put them away until hot weather, knowing they would be something different and I was proven right on that account.

    As I continued fishing the small bait I kept getting bites from lethargic bass. If you put it right on top of them the bass would usually just suck it in and never move. I’d set the hook and presto, another bass would come alive and try to hang me in the wooden structure.

    Occasionally the bass would strike the lure on the fall and move off slowly. The key to this type of fishing is to set the hook as soon as you detect a strike and then power them up and out of the structure as quickly as possible. They’re holding in, or very near, the cover and it will take some tough line and heavy duty equipment to drag them out and away from the brush. Once they wrap you then you’ve lost the battle.

Slow but sure

    Though the bites didn’t come as fast as they do when the bass are active in cooler weather, these small, hand poured plastics really made a difference between catching a bass and coming up empty handed as evidenced by my recent afternoon trip. I only had one of the lures left, so my partner was left scrambling for something else, and he never did find anything that the bass wanted!

    If you’re looking for just a little bit of an edge and want to try something different that the bass haven’t seen in these parts, then look for them in your local tackle shop, or check them out online at poorboysbaits.com, or talk to Kim Straley at 260-463-2687 about getting some locally.

    Contact  Mike Giles at

601-917-3898 or e-mail him at

Mikegiles18@comcast.net