First post!!!!! Anyways i am Fishing out of a kick boat on a relatively small lake. I have had great luck fishing the banks and visual cover. I rarely catch small fish. Mostly 15-17 inch bass with 2 fish reaching 21 and 23 inches. I just got a scale so i can now record wt.

There are some times when there are no fish on the banks to be found. I will stop fishing the bank and go out to the deep water but im just ticking in the wind. My problem is that i dont have a topo map and i cant hook any electronics to my kick boat. Im pretty sure im SOL but i figured that i would ask anyways.

-Thanks, Marcus

Carolina Rig  

Is it a natural or man made lake?

WELCOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carolina Rig

Welcome aboard!

8-)

I fish from shore and a float tube, on small reservoirs in northern CO.

In summer, a lot of bass move away from shore. Some waters have good shorelines with appropriate cover and cool enough temps to hold bass in summer, but most waters I fish the majority move away from the shorelines. This occurs even in not-so-deep waters the bass relating to main water basin features like points, humps, and offshore weed clumps.

A few ideas:

You can try to find waters that have shallow bass all year. I have a few such waters.

Look for shoreline features (points) that are large enough to continue into the main basin. Look for offshore shallow areas in mid-summer when vegetation is up, by spotting weeds that reach the surface. Triangulate these for future reference.

Fish islands. I find a lot of bass related to islands in summer, especially deeper ones. (How much depth matters depends on your specific water)

Since bass seem to be happy just being away-from-shore in many waters, they may not be really deep, and I many find groups of fish holding in shallow-ish flats oriented to isolated or obvious features like weed clumps. If isolated, even surprisingly small clumps, can concentrate bass. Remember, the shallows produce a lot of food and bass are likely nearby. Deep is relative.

I carry large floats with weights affixed for marker buoys, and re-visit spots throughout the day.

Fish outside weed walls, especially those with deeper water nearby. Judge this by finding steeper shorelines and well formed weed walls.

I affixed a large saltwater spincast reel to my float tube rod holder and marked the 200# dacron every foot and five feet for sounding.

Purchase a rod mounted Humminbird wireless sonar. Not the best unit, so if you are sure you are not going to go ahead and affix a full grayscale to your boat, it can be useful for fishing depth changes and finding unseen features.

Welcome

C/R with a heavy sinker will help you determine the makeup of the deeper water. You should be able to determine if it is rock, sand, mud, etc. by the way the weight will act during a retrieve. Good luck.

A tungston 1oz carolina rig on 20lb braided line will tell you everything you need to know.  It's slow going, but you can find creek channels and important structure all while effectively working the lake.

Some good points.

First off, do you have Google Earth? If the water is clear, you can see more than you think if you know what you're looking at. Usually the darker shades of water is deeper.

Observe the shoreline. Are there obvious points? How about feeder creeks? There are clues that may lead you or make it possible to picture in your mind what the bottom contour is.

I used to use a deep diving crankbait like a DD22 to find structure. In a shallower resevoir you may need one that doesn't dive that deep. It should be obvious when you hit bottom. Ofcourse you need to know close to how deep it dives for you. Start by throwing paralell to the bank until your not hitting bottom. Once you found the deep water offshore, the job is to then hit bottom once again out in the deep water. Deep cranks are also great for finding submerged vegetation. They'll usually gather you a nice sample. But we are talking about structure. A c-rig will allow you to feel the bottom at all times but it may be hard to feel for drop offs unless they are very vertical.

BTW, welcome to Bass Resource!

CJ

Yes! What CJ says. Satellite images used are taken on sunny days and show major shallow areas of your waters. It'll at least show on what part of the lake you should launch from.

I've found C-rigs not helpful where I am. The bottoms of my waters are covered in Chara (skunkgrass/sandgrass), a tall, tough algae that envelopes dragged weights and stops me cold!

With the popularity of kayaks, there are some really good clamp on accessories availble today. Humminbird 140C for example should work well for you. A hand held GPS will give you the way points you need to return to any specific outside spot you find.

Before electronics we used triangulation; linning up 3 shore landmarks to remember where the spots were.

Natural lakes are difficult to determine where there may be outside channels, humps, rock piles or whatever, however the lay of the land should give you some clues.

Look around and keep you eyes and ears open; Grebes or other diving birds feeding out away from shore indicates bait fish, splashes or swirls out in the middle of know where should be checked out.

Scale the C-rig down to a slip shot rig using 1/8 oz mojo type slip sinker and small round slit shot for a weight stopper, or a plastic Carolina keeper. Drop shot is another option for small plastics. In line spinners are very effective on smaller lakes.

WRB

Thanks guys. Ill look into getting a portable unit. Tried to Google Earth it but it didnt work out. Thanks again for all of the comments.

-Marcus