Paul Roberts

Yeah. Paint jobs can't hide the fact that a lure is not food, made painfully obvious under high visibility conditions. Doing the right thing and putting it in the right places becomes critical under good lighting, whereas at night, chunk and wind can do the trick.

I think some of this has to do with Doug Hannon's statements that he has caught most of his 10#plus bass between 10 and 2, and he had quite a following 10 years or so ago. I believe his reasoning was that large bass are efficient predators and, being primarily visual, they pick midday to hunt. I believe he was talking about clear water environments. From what I've seen, I've always wondered about this claim, leaning toward what Catt offers: That during bright conditions bass are more easily put off by the artificiality of lures, and certainly sloppy presentation. Further, I've watched hunting bass under bright conditions in my shallow clear ponds, and have seen how easily bluegills can evade them, seeing the bass coming from a distance. Dark conditions provide bass an advantage, I believe -and anglers too. But these are average sized bass that I observe. Maybe Hannon is right that large bass feed when they please. I'd like to hear Roadwarrior chime in here. He's a 10-2 adherent.

It's all great stuff. Yeah, bass don't tend to get my heart going like a screaming bull coming in. But then again, neither do trout, or even muskies. Something about 800lbs and 12 dagger like tines as wide as my car comin' at me that does it. It's the wondering in which way he's gonna bust me. I've yet to release an arrow on one. Whitetails they ain't.

Keep safe. We'll keep you in our thoughts.

Gosh, really depends on the water I'm visiting that day, and then the conditions of the day, or hour. I carry four rods, as that's all my float tube will allow. Up to three rods if I'm fishing from shore. For the smallish pits and res I fish most now, the 4 rods are designated: -Jig/pork (often a Nichols' Mango) on a 6ft MH spinning. -Spinnerbait on a 6.5ft MH casting. This rod doubles as a light slop fishing rig. -a plastic (worm, tube, soft jerk) on a 7ft MH spinning -a crank or topwater on a 6.5ft Med casting Some waters and seasons I exchange one of the above for a 6.5ft med spinning (finesse), or a 6.5ft and 7ft H spinning or casting (heavy work).

Gee, looks like home to me (now). I actually have to drive an hour or so downslope to get to my bass waters. I was all wrapped up in FF for trout until I moved to CO. Now that I have snowmelt streams in every canyon, I'm chasing bass. I guess bass is where I started and that aesthetic, the rich peaty dark water and those green fish have me by the heartstrings. Of course, then there's smallmouths...and walleyes...and muskies...and...chubs...I guess I've loved them all.

So, Raul, our furthest man south, What do your bass do in that sweltering heat? Do they seem to have adapted to such high temps? Do they seem to avoid them in any way? Do you fish any shallow waters that bass cannot escape hot water? I'm really curious. How do they cope? Oh yes, do you have florida's, or northerns, or both?

I think the coverage surrounding the pro tour, held on top waters (often at at peak times), skews what average waters can really offer in terms of "good" fishing. I've heard of local tournaments with many boats that have weighed in NO fish on certain days, or that only took a few lbs to win. This is not JUST a matter of fishing skill, it's also a matter of fishery quality, which is a matter of water and habitat quality. If you aren't catching, it may NOT be entirely your fault. If you really want a real challenge, try to figure out an unsung local water body, at all seasons. And don't use what you read in the magazines as the yardstick of success. This is not to knock tournament fishing coverage, it's about proper perspective.

I've heard it can happen too, but I've never seen it, and don't expect to. I was always perplexed by photos of the "bloody" tails on bass described as spawning bass. A lot if not all of these big bass were most likely females, and females don't do the nest digging. My guess is that the red lips and tails are hormonal in nature, maybe from the development of gonads, (which begins in fall) rather than from either eating crayfish, or spawning.

Ahhhh..so you do have fall. It just comes in the winter. Yeah, JF, that crushed ice fishing is great. It's when it becomes hard ice fishing that it becomes more "challenging". When the water was super-cooled (<32F -It's true!) I used to thaw my egg sacks and yarn flies in my mouth. But, I didn't have to mow the lawn!

Curious: Is what you are seeing in this particular water body unique in your area? If so, what is different, in appearance, about this water? Here's some background on what high water temperatures can mean, what to look for, and/or why you MIGHT legitimately be beating a dead horse: The "optimum" temperature for largemouth bass, determined in the laboratory, is around 82-83F. This is the temperature at which bass can convert food quickest into flesh, resulting in peak growth over time. Above this bass realize diminished returns and must decrease activity and/or find cooler water. These numbers are for northern largemouths. I'm not sure, off the top of my head, how high Florida largemouths can operate well at. Most likely they are metabolically efficient at somewhat higher temps. But, there's a big BUT... To realize this "optimum efficiency" bass must be eating an awful lot, otherwise they simply burn more calories than they can take in. It appears that few waters produce enough food to allow for this, especially in the north, so bass hunker down during hot spells, down-shifting into maintenance mode, or use deeper cooler water their preferred temperature for the existing feeding regime. Many, especially shallow bass, go nocturnal. Some waters, especially in the south, can produce enough food for bass to make use of such optimum water temps. This is primarily why southern (northern strain) bass grow bigger, and more of them, than do northern waters. The take home message is: Such temperatures may be potentially optimum for growth, but they may never be realized in your chosen water body. So, it's not optimum for fishing. This may vary year to year with available prey (notably in the north), so it's not always an open and shut case. You can expect though, in many if not most waters, that bass fishing will slide as water temps get high certainly for horizontal presentations. Have you tried punching heavy jigs or plastics vertically into the densest cover? You tried shiners...so...unless you just haven't put them back under where the bass are, you might really be beating a dead (or torpid) horse. Next up is night fishing. Otherwise, find another horse to whip. You could try fishing deeper, as you questioned. You are measuring very high surface temps, so you would probably need to go at least 10 feet or better to get an appreciable temp difference from the surface in mid-summer. If you are fishing deeper than say 15 feet in a fertile water, you'll want to be sure there is adequate oxygen down there. If the water body is exposed to wind, has good clarity, it most probably has oxygen in the depths. If it's sheltered from wind, has poor clarity, and you see much dead vegetation and algae, it may not have a good deeper fishery. Fish it at peaks times and see. You could try very early morning, especially if there is good water clarity and the vegetation is healthy. In poorer water quality, oxygen may deplete overnight forcing the bass to hunker down by morning. I fish a shallow heavily vegetated pond with reasonable clarity (~3feet), that gets hot (mid 80s) and has an intense crack of dawn bite in mid-summer. This bite is really noteworthy. It probably fishes really well at night too, but I haven't tried it. I get myself to a prime spot at first light and bang a few before the sun hits the water and things fall silent. Then, unless I get a heck of a dark T-storm I've found I'm better off packing up and heading to a different water body. Springs, if there are any, could be a really great find. I have several ponds I fish that receive ground water: One has a lot of it and it is actually 58F at the 10 foot bottom in mid-summer! The bass are excluded from much of it and are found under shoreline vegetation, where the slop bite is usually very good. You'd never know all those great offshore weedlines would be better suited to trout, if you didn't drop a thermometer down. Another pond is shallow and weedy and gets hot in mid-summer, shutting down the daylight bite during hot spells. But there is a small spring seep (I found while fishing in a float tube I could feel the cool water on my legs) that gives up big bass at mid-day. Good luck in your efforts on this water. Let us know what you come up with. And don't beat yourself up: You may be beating a dead horse.

Oookay -Funny stuff, but I have to get serious... LowBudgetHooker: I see this in late winter and early spring, and it recedes rapidly as waters' warm -well prior to the spawn. The jaws (tooth patches really) appear flushed with blood 9within the capillaries). Why? I dunno. I've heard the same reasons LBH mentions. I don't think it's that though. I've caught crayfish-filled bass in summer and they don't have this. This is the first time I've heard of this in the fall. Or, I 'spose I just never noticed.

You can adapt to just about any situation with jigs. There are a million possible permutations of head weight and style, body material, and trailer type. Think of jigs in terms of components, rather than a complete out-of-the-package lure.

That's a heck of a day. Wish we had hurricanes up here!

Raul wrote on: Sep 12th, 2008, 6:16pm I guess you'd already answered that...but thanks for the details. The "rainy season", eh? Interesting. Doesn't sound like the "fall" I know! Not much of a demarcation (temperature) between seasons? What does your winter look like? Does it get much cooler? More to the point: How do your average surface temps look like over the course of the year? 78 80 95 80 78 ? Something like that? Are your bass florida's, or do you have northerns too?

My oldest graphite rod I purchased in 1981: a Skyline 6005. A year later I added a 5506. They function as well as they ever did. I've added and sold/given rods almost every year. I've not broken one yet. Oh...I take that back... I broke a 9wt Loomis fly rod on a steelhead. Picked up on a nymph take and the rod folded! I was shocked, and a little ticked at Loomis. Later on my fishing partner for the day admitted he'd plopped his wader bag down on my rod, not seeing it in the early morning darkness. This created a hairline fracture. If he hadn't remembered doing it, and admitted it, I'd have thought those Loomis rods were more fragile than they really are. Also broke a steelhead drift rod lifting too hard on a steelie. That rod, an Eagle Claw "Blue Diamond", was a line that had a history of breakage problems in the tackle shop I worked in. I new this about the rod and had been careful with it for several seasons (catching many steelies in temperatures down into the single digits) up until that one day when I over-strained it while bringing one to hand -on a rather balmy day no less. Some rods simply had breakage problems. Some (almost always off-brands) we had as much as 70% returns with. They were early thin-walled rods (very light and crisp) and had to be handled and fished with some care. I owned two such rods and fished them for several years without a problem, but I was very careful to seat the ferrules properly, check them frequently, and not to over-strain them. But most rod breakage comes from abuse: From dings or fine fractures, over-straining them, or over straining in a way they weren't meant to be -like in landing a fish with the rod pointed straight up. One poke upwards when the fish makes a dash and POP! If you do buy a "really good" graphite rod, take care of it and it'll last a long time -at least 17 years:).

There are bass in the eastern part of the state. But real estate prices are VERY high.

Not a dumb question -Not a very good descriptor I guess. It's a great spinnerbait for broken (discontinuous) slop: Surface weeds clumped and matted with open pockets. The spoon body can be skated over the matts and then the bait bulged beneath the surface slowly through the open pockets. It makes a great wake with large twin Colorado's and the spoon body wags side to side. In the right type of cover I'll simply dedicate a rod to it. It's caught a lot of big bass for me over the years.

I dunno. But a friend tried to give me one the other day; I turned it down.

Now that's satisfaction. Very nice looking bait.

Nice fish. Nice to have those fast days. They keep us thinking about days to come.

Nice water. Pretty fish. Gosh I love those pickeral.

Beautiful fish. Nice photo. Congrats on the win.

Ditto! Excellent advice. Often your most valuable time is spent walking and looking rather than blindly casting. Make use of a brilliantly sunny day by walking the shoreline, viewing from high spots, even climbing trees! This can save you enormous amounts of unproductive casting time.

Great story. There are a lot of valuable details in that story, pertaining to bass behavior. You know Paul, I hope you save your stories. Collectively, along with your thoughts/analysis (fleshing out some of the details), they would make a very interesting and valuable read on angling for big bass. Something to put together on some winter evenings maybe?