Bass

My guide client Dave and I were drifting along a river section that split around a small, gravel-covered island.  We were concentrating on the main bank, where a deeper trough hugged the shoreline.  We saw steady action all morning, but nothing for 15 minutes or so and were just about ready to move to another area.  Then I happened to look over my shoulder, toward the island, and noticed surface disturbance and a spray of jumping minnows.  Excitedly I asked Dave to fire a cast in that direction.  A moment later he was hooked up with a three-pound-plus river smallmouth. 

On many bodies of water during the winter, fall, and summer month’s bass and baitfish migrate to deep offshore structure in search of cooler or warmer waters. A few simple adjustments to your fishing gear and cast will have you tackling bass, even when they go deep.

For many anglers having a slow day out on the water, the only thing that can turn it around is a good plastic worm rig. A number of fishing rigs exist, and each one serves its own purpose for fishing highly weeded areas or deep shelves or any other underwater terrain where bass like to hang out. The action of a good plastic worm rig is incredibly enticing to bass, so rig one up in one of the following ways, and get out on the water!

The first frost of the year hit this morning, marking the end of the shallow water largemouth bass bite. Water temperatures have plummeted the last week, going from a balmy 77 degrees F to a chilly 58 degrees F – literally overnight.

The tidal Potomac River near Washington, D.C. gets lots of accolades for its brackish water largemouth fishing and exotic snakeheads. But what often gets overlooked is that this river also offers superb smallmouth bass action for over 100 miles upstream from the Nation's Capital.

One of the strongest associations in fishing is that of largemouth bass and weeds.

Rivers, which make up a significant bass-fishing resource in our country, function differently than reservoirs or natural lakes. River bass are subject to the regular rises and falls in flow, which plays a huge factor in where they locate within a river. When the flow is up, which it has been all summer on my home waters of western Pennsylvania, it pushes bass close to the bank.