I'm thinking the largest and smartest bass stay away from people. Anyone vertical jig patiently on deep points? Lure choice? This season, I'm going to try deep vertical large wacky worms. Thoughts...

Yes & you can also cast lipless cranks horizontally & wait until they hit bottom & then slow retrieve. You need to mark fish or bait at the depths you want to fish to be the most effective. Fish the depths where your marking hooks or bait only otherwise it could be long day if you pick the wrong depths to target.

It will take a while to get down there. I use a flickshake and a Neko rig in 30'+ of water for smallies throughout the summer with great success. What lake are you thinking? Cedar?

Try a dropper loop about 18” above a sinker at the end of your line. Attach your favorite soft plastic to the dropper loop. Set the TM so that you going 3 mph, drop down until you hit bottom crank up once or twice. Keep maintains bottom contact. If you lose contact let out more line.

A 3-way rig is good technique as well.

Jigging spoon is my choice for vertical fishing.

Something to keep in mind fishing this deep is barotrauma. If you intend to release the fish, you are going to cause some of this which will greatly increase the chances of mortality.

Lots of ice anglers here fish deep in the winter for panfish but there is no intent to release the fish, so barotrauma is not really an issue since there's no release anyways.

By all means learn how to “fizz” a deep caught fish. We fish deep Steel Shad blade baits up to 60 feet but normally in 35-40 feet. I have a fizzing needle in my boat at all times.

My only vertical fishing is done with a jigging spoon.

Last few weeks nearly all my fish that didn't hit a falling flutter spoon have come from the bottom, 26-32 foot. Blade baits hopped in the winter, along with jigging spoons and tail spinners more vertically. In the summer, I generally fish deep horizontally with jigs, jika rig, t-rig; occasionally horizontal with drop shot.

I haven't had the need to fizz any (all LMB). None exhibited visible signs of barotrauma, and all were released quickly.

All the time, did it just today. Fluke on a jighead, tube, spoon, silver buddy, even works with shakey head

I'm thinking deep strip mine bass that are hiding their whole life.

4 hours ago, Bartableman7 said:

I'm thinking deep strip mine bass that are hiding their whole life.

I fished strip mines for decades and found that the bass will hold in one of two places. The first is on or just out from the first stairstep, many times the only one, before that drop to deep water. The second is suspended just below the depth of light penetration. The latter is where vertical presentations really shine. Those fish don't do a lot of chasing and their strike window, when they aren't feeding. is small and any bait that you can present just above them will produce when a horizontal presentation is ignored.

I love dragging a jig or a 4-6 inch soft top hook swimbait down on bottom down deep

"Fizzing" fish, doesn't alleviate many of the issues that derive from barotrauma, even if you do everything right on really deep caught fish, the chances of them swimming away just fine, only to die at a later date increase substantially. It also opens the door for infections and of course their swim bladder doesn't work properly for a while at the least...

Even fish that have the ability to burp their swim bladders, like Lake Trout, the chances of surviving catch & release when pulled from more extreme depths decreases considerably. Lake Trout can be caught much deeper than Bass, so something to keep in mind, but you can visually see a big difference in a Lake Trout of any size that is hooked less than 50' down and more than 50' down, it's a night and day difference, no matter how slow you bring them up.

It's hard for me to justify fishing ultra "deep" for Bass, depths exceeding 30ish feet anyway, not here to judge anyone else, frankly don't care, but a trophy sized Smallmouth Bass typically takes a decade or more to grow, so when they go real deep, I switch to river fishing or just fishing shallower lakes and maybe fishing more Largemouth... or targeting Smallies on the deeper lakes after dark when they may be shallower or more active in the sub 30' range anyway... Fishing at night would also help you achieve your goal of avoiding people, many portions of the year, this may be when the largest and smartest fish are most active too. :)

If you are going to fish ultra deep, might consider another option than fizzing.

Muskie guys will use a weight with a clip on the end of it, attached to a 20' or so piece of rope, they attach the clip to the jaw of the Muskie, drop the fish down to 20' of depth or more and allow it to revive there, this negates the need to fizz and is supposed to be a better option, the clip easily pops free the moment the fish begins to struggle and wants to take off. Never seen anyone do anything like this with Bass, but the guys trolling deeper diving lures for Muskies swear by it.

Something like this: https://www.seaqualizer.com/

Hopkins  style spoon over 15’ vertical jig. I’m particularly fond of  the “Shorty”Style maintains good contact with bottom. Rod, line and swivel type make a big difference.

3 hours ago, Mr. Aquarium said:

I love dragging a jig or a 4-6 inch soft top hook swimbait down on bottom down deep

You love fishing ... anywhere anytime

4 hours ago, Peninsular said:

Muskie guys will use a weight with a clip on the end of it, attached to a 20' or so piece of rope, they attach the clip to the jaw of the Muskie, drop the fish down to 20' of depth or more and allow it to revive there, this negates the need to fizz and is supposed to be a better option, the clip easily pops free the moment the fish begins to struggle and wants to take off. Never seen anyone do anything like this with Bass, but the guys trolling deeper diving lures for Muskies swear by it.

I've been muskie fishing for 25 years and never heard of such a thing. Frankly it sounds like it would cause more harm than good.

Not to mention that at least here, any muskie under 54 inches must be immediately released. Doing what you described would not be permitted.

As for the fizzing, the average angler is not going to regularly be able to do what they need to do quickly and properly in order to alleviate the problem. Even a well-trained biologist would admit this.

Best to just avoid fishing in those depths if the intend is to release the fish.

11 minutes ago, gim said:

Best to just avoid fishing in those depths if the intend is to release the fish.

I'm with Gim. My dad and I were fishing a fly-in cabin in Ontario once for Lakers. I used a three-way swivel and caught one to eat, but I couldn't catch another because of the fear of killing it. However, we found Lakers in 10' of water on that lake while trolling for pike, which was weird because it was mid-summer, and we caught about twenty of them for fun. When I told the manager of the fly-in service, he looked at me like I was lying, but it surprised us too.

Barotrauma won’t happen if you just catch the fish and let it go

59 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Barotrauma won’t happen if you just catch the fish and let it go

correct. i've caught smallies out of 40+ and if i CPR in a timely manner they swim away just as fast as they came. if you throw them in the livewell, for like any amount of time be prepared to fizz

Reading this, two things caught my eye. First, lakers are kinda special because they have a special air bladder and then can compensate as they go up in the water column. You can hear them BURP if you bring them up not to fast. They can be put back in deep water with practically no problem. (Nothing is always sure).

Also, big smart bass are not always deep. The biggest ones I have caught, both largemouth and smallmouth were in inches of water ( even during the summer ). But I live north.

3 hours ago, gim said:

I've been muskie fishing for 25 years and never heard of such a thing. Frankly it sounds like it would cause more harm than good.

Not to mention that at least here, any muskie under 54 inches must be immediately released. Doing what you described would not be permitted.

As for the fizzing, the average angler is not going to regularly be able to do what they need to do quickly and properly in order to alleviate the problem. Even a well-trained biologist would admit this.

Best to just avoid fishing in those depths if the intend is to release the fish.

Well I don't even troll for Muskies and have never used one, but have seen photos of such devices and they are praised as game changers on hard to release fish by some very credible individuals with long-standing involvement in Muskie conservation and state management of Muskies. So they can't be bad for the fish I imagine as you are thinking, but like I said, never seen one in person or used one. If it's between death or a sore jaw, I guess the sore jaw would be better. Trolling is pretty popular on some of our biggest, deepest lakes, lakes that you can see the bottom in 50' or more of water, so fish will come up a long ways to eat a lure sometimes I guess and can lead to difficulty releasing, these guys baits are 20' deep or less.

I guess I was merely trying to nicely convey, probably a better option all things considered than an untrained individual "fizzing" fish with dirty needles. 🙂

The device I linked is similar, but not exactly how the ones I have seen are, to be honest the home-made ones I have seen are likely better on the fish. I don't have photos, but have seen them on a private message board for the Muskie conservation non-profit I am the Secretary for and wondered what the heck it was so I asked, otherwise would have never known such a thing exists lol

3 minutes ago, Reel said:

Reading this, two things caught my eye. First, lakers are kinda special because they have a special air bladder and then can compensate as they go up in the water column. You can hear them BURP if you bring them up not to fast. They can be put back in deep water with practically no problem. (Nothing is always sure).

Also, big smart bass are not always deep. The biggest ones I have caught, both largemouth and smallmouth were in inches of water ( even during the summer ). But I live north.

Despite this ability, studies have shown they die from barotrauma almost as easily as everything else.

More studies are underway here in Michigan, but they did some studies previously that showed a pretty grim survival rate of immediately released deep hooked Lake Trout... They swim away just fine to die in the coming days from damages sustained by the initial barotrauma... I believe it was something like 40% of fish died, fish that were brought up slowly and immediately released.

3 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

I'm with Gim. My dad and I were fishing a fly-in cabin in Ontario once for Lakers. I used a three-way swivel and caught one to eat, but I couldn't catch another because of the fear of killing it. However, we found Lakers in 10' of water on that lake while trolling for pike, which was weird because it was mid-summer, and we caught about twenty of them for fun. When I told the manager of the fly-in service, he looked at me like I was lying, but it surprised us too.

Early Spring you can see Lake Trout in less than 5' of water in Lake Michigan, they occasionally even run the lower portions of rivers here.

Fish descenders are required for the entire Pacific coast as of a few years ago so there has been a good amount of development in that space recently. You can get a cheap one that works fine for what we are doing for $13.

The fancy ones mostly add features we wouldn't need as bass anglers like the ability to release at specific depths or the ability to retrieve the releaser without reeling your line in. That might be nice if I was fishing in 300' but I can reel up 30' to grab the descender.

IDK man, I regularly ocean fish 30’ - 60’ of water depending on tide and what side of the hump I’m on. If fishing is slow I’ll venture out to the Federal line and fish the 90’ contour line. I have yet to have a need to fizz a fish.

I guess if you’re worried, do what divers do who ascend slowly, reel up very slowly 🙂

On 1/19/2026 at 9:17 AM, DogBone_384 said:

You love fishing ... anywhere anytime

That’s for sure lol! Fishing for Anything, anywhere with everything