Well, June is arguably one of the best months of the year to go fishing. Why? Well, the bass have just finished up spawning and they are feeding up now. And so you can catch them on just about everything, honestly.
But there are standouts that work time and time again throughout the entire country, no matter where you are in most conditions. And I want to talk about those today. There's three main categories of baits.
Let's start off with soft plastic baits. There's three within that that work all the time.
We'll start off with the Senko. Yeah, that's, you know, the Senko style bait like the Missile 48. That works really well because a lot of the bass are up shallow right now and they're in less than 10 feet of water and that lure works really well down to about 5 or 6 feet of water, weightless.
You can fish it wacky style, which is very, very popular. You can just put the hook through the middle. I like to use this little gadget here from Geecrack, and that works really well because it only puts a little hole in it and the hook is completely away from it. So you really don't rip the bait up as much. It really holds that bait together.
That's a little trick going to pass along to you guys, but you can take this and skip it under docks. You can go along weed edges. You can put it in pockets on the weeds. Just anything shallow that you see, any kind of objects you see, lay downs whatnot, and just throw it up their weightless and let it just flutter on down and do its thing on slack line and you'll catch a ton of bass that way.
Green pumpkin is what I'd start off with or watermelon with red seed. If your water is really clear that's a really good color to go with or just straight up watermelon. You don't need to go crazy with a lot of colors.
Although they make over 100 different colors to just Yamamoto does just in the Senko, let alone all the other manufacturers. So you know, find one that matches your forward species and there you go. It matches the color forage species, and there ya go.
The next plastic bait that I want to talk to you about is a straight tail worm. Now, straight tail worm, like a Roboworm, you know, that works really well 4 inch to 6 inch size. There's also the Magic Worm from Missile Baits, very similar bait.
These straight tail worms can be thrown anywhere and they match the forage really, really well. You can put them on a split shot rig or on a drop shot rig and they work exceptionally well in depths down to you know, 20 foot deep.
And you know if the bass the bite is kind of off or if you just want to catch a ton of fish right, you can even if they're active. You can catch a bunch of fish on this, just a straight tail worm.
The colors I like to use is you know, Aaron's magic. Like I mentioned before, Peoples is another color. I know that's a color. There's also a green pumpkin Money Color. I think Missile Baits puts that out.
Just a variety of different colors out there that work really, really well. And you know, I have perch in my area so that those colors tend to work really well. And also bluegill, bluegill bite is on right now. They're spawning.
So if you got a color that's got a little bit of chartreuse in it or something like that, or you can dip the tail in chartreuse, even better. You can catch a lot of fish that way.
The third plastic bait, tried and true proven ribbon tail worm. Just a 7 inch ribbon tail worm. I think Big Bite Baits makes one that I really like. I think it's the BB something BB2, I can't remember what it's called, but there's a bunch of others.
And it's really simple to use. You just put a 1/4 ounce weight on it. You don't need a heavyweight because there's not any appendages or anything, so it falls to the water pretty quickly. So I wouldn't go more than 1/4 ounce.
And you can use this to target a little bit deeper water. You can target the ends of docks that are in 10 feet of water, brush piles, you can, you know, submerged logs, any kind of rocks or stumps, especially if it's on a long tapering point as the bass make their way out from the shallows into the summertime haunts.
You know, the closest point or secondary point from those flats can be really good and you can probe them with a ribbon tail worm. And it's really easy. You just drop it down there and just, you know, pop it up and let it flutter and hop it up and let it flutter a couple times.
If you don't get bit, reel it up and throw it back out. You know, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to swim it. Just throw it out and then just a nice steady reeling it along and that ribbon tail just moves along and it looks like a little bait fish.
And you know, you do it alongside docks. Works really well that way. Any kind of visible cover and lay downs, that sort of stuff works really well. Texas rig it so you don't get hung up. This is good for probing weeds that are starting to grow up and top out. Great bait to use during June.
Now June is arguably the best month for top water fishing. Why? Well, like I said, the bass have just got over spawning. And they're still left shallow. Most of them are still up shallow.
I mean, some have gone out deep, but the majority of the bass are still up in, you know, less than 10 feet of water. And so they're susceptible to top water baits. And the cool thing about it is you don't have to wait till just doing it in the morning or in the evening. The top water bite can last all day long in June.
So that was what makes it really fun. Now there's three main top waters that I like to use during this time of the year.
The first one is the tried and true proven Zara Spook, you know, the walking the dog kind of. The Sammy is excellent bait as well. I think that Yo-Zuri makes that a great great baits to use.
Anytime that the bass are active, you can work in a long docks outside weed lines over the cross of points. You know, crisscross those points and cover them well as those fish start to move out. And anything that's under the water that they can sit on for a little while, like you know, brush pile or rock pile, anything like that.
You can bring that Zara Spook right over the top of it and blam-oh! You know you can catch a bunch of fish that way.
With the Zara Spook. I'm pretty straightforward. I just use a frog pattern. You know, it's got a white belly to it. I'll use a perch pattern because there's a lot of perch in my lake or a bluegill pattern works really well, particularly in spring because the bluegill are spawning right now and the bass are feeding on bluegill.
You can also use if your lake is really clear, you can use translucent colors. What I mean by that is it's not transparent, but if you hold it up to the light, you can see the light through it. Those work really well when the water is super clear. They don't have as much of a silhouette to them and the bass hit them more often.
So just in the same color patterns, a shad pattern is one you need to have. If you get shad in your lake the shad spawns on right now. So a shad Zara Spook works really well.
Poppers are the next top water to use, particularly around bluegill beds. These bass and the bluegill are spawning. You can bet the bass are nearby, especially right in June right after they spawn because they're all up shallow and they'll be feeding on them.
So a little popper that's got a bluegill pattern to it can be deadly just working around those weed edges right next to those bluegill beds. Bluegill beds are easy to find, by the way. It looks like someone threw out a bunch of pancakes on the bottom of the lake floor.
They're just these little dishpan, maybe a little bit dinner plate size beds just, and they're all together. They just communal, just a bunch of, you know, looks pot marks up.
And if you look really closely, there's a little bluegill sitting right on them. You can spook them a little bit if you use your trolling motor or if you're on the shoreline, you can cast out to them. You can see the bluegill move around. That's the bass will be up there patrolling, feeding on them.
So that popper works really, really well in those shallows. Just throw it out in those weed lines and where those bass are lurking and hold on tight because you're going to catch some fish that way.
The other top water bait I like to use a lot this time of year is buzz baits, especially if you got a lot of milfoil or hydrilla in your lake. You can use a buzz bait to cover water.
Just go on down the bank casting and winding, casting water. Whether you're from a boat or from the shoreline, you can cover a lot of water with a buzz bait.
And you just bring it over the top of those, you know, the milfoil. If it hasn't topped out yet, those bass will come up out of there. They'll be in there. They're lurking in the milfoil right now and they'll come right up out of there and blast it.
So great way to catch a bunch of fish on top water, have yourself a blast.
The last category is the deeper baits. You know you want to fish deeper when some of these bass, especially the early spawners, they've come out deeper. Now they're deeper than 10 foot deep.
And so you've got to have a category of bait that can reach them, starting with deep diving crank baits, right?
And deep diving crank baits are like 10 to 12 foot deep. I'm not talking ultra deep, but something like that. 10 to 12 foot deep, maybe 15 at the most.
The Rapala DT, they make some. Strike King makes a variety of deep diving baits. There's the Dredger series from Berkley, so on and so forth. They make a whole variety of different baits that dive deep in depths.
The key with fishing these baits is you want it to dive a little bit deeper than the depth you're fishing. So say for example, you're fishing in eight feet of water. You want a crankbait that dives 9 to 10 foot.
Why? You want it to bounce and ricochet off the bottom and any objects off the bottom, especially if you got some scattered boulders or stumps. You want it to get down there and then bang off of that and that ricochet tends to draw a strike.
And if you really wanted to make it work even better when it hits an object like that, let it sit for a second or two, just pause it and then start reeling again. And that pause and then that change and pick up again, a lot of times that's when the bass hit it.
There have been times I've actually got a crankbait stuck in Riprap and I'm popping up, popping up, popping it. Finally, when it pops free, wham, a fish will annihilate it. So be ready for that too.
But those change of direction, erratic action, that's kind of what you want to have when you're fishing these deeper diving crankbaits.
You fish them again on those long tapering points, points that head out, you know, close to the creek channel where there's creek bends. You get deeper, steeper banks. Hopefully if you got scattered weeds or some chunk rock or something in them, that's an excellent place to be fishing these crankbaits.
Crankbait colors are very simple right now. Shad because the shad spawns on, so you want to be fishing shad, especially in the early, early mornings. You got to have that tied on if you got shad in your lake.
Bluegill like I mentioned before, and perch, those are the three colors I would stick with right now. You could use crawdads as well if you're fishing a lot of rocks and chunk rock or your lake is a real like a rocky canyon like you have out West.
A crawdad pattern works really well. I like to use the green crawdad and the brown crawdads, my favorite this time of year. And anytime you're fishing Riprap, you're going to have crawdads in there. So crawdad pattern works really well.
Another bait to use to get down to those fish a little bit deeper is the football jig. I like to take it and put a twin tail grub on the end, like a hula grub. Some people call it the spider grub.
That is excellent time to fish it right now because you get the crawdads that are out and you get some rocks in the area. Maybe riprap or you got a rocky bank or a shoreline with a lot of riprap on it or rocks or if you got a long tapering point with scattered boulders on it.
Drag a football jig. I just use an eighth ounce, maybe a three 16th oz jig head, and it depends on the wind and the depth, right.
So if you're fishing really deep, maybe deep in the 15 foot, I might move up to a 3/8 or if I've got some wind that I have to deal with, I may even go up to 1/2 ounce at the most.
But starting off with a 3/16 ounce and I just put a, like I said, a hula grub on the back of it. Yamamoto 176 color is my go to bait, but also smoke with salt and pepper is an excellent color.
They do make green pumpkin, so that's always a good color to throw. Avocado is another color that I've been throwing for decades and it works really well.
There's a variety of colors. Clear with salt and pepper is another one with a little silver flake. Some lakes that have a certain type of crawdad in it, you can go with gold flake instead or a copper flake. That might trigger the bites.
But at any rate, what you're doing here is you're throwing it out and you let it hit the bottom and you drag it on the bottom. You might hop it a couple times, but really you're kind of dragging along the bottom and crawling across those rocks and boulders and whatnot.
And those bass are snug up tight against that. They'll come up and pow, they'll pounce on it. Sometimes it's cast after cast after cast. It can be hot and heavy fishing, so be ready for that.
Make sure you got enough plastics because you can tear through them pretty quick.
But that's an excellent way to get those fish down deep.
And then lastly is the old Carolina rig, right? The ball and chain been around for decades and it's still very productive for good reason. It just flat out works.
And this works really well. You're fishing those deeper humps, points, ledges, those Creek channels with the bass are using those as highways to go to deeper water heading on out for the summer haunts.
You can probe it with a Carolina rig. I like to use a little bit bigger bait. A brush hog works really well. A Rage Hawg is an excellent bait to use on the back of it.
And just dredge it, you know, drag along using 1/2 ounce, maybe a three quarter oz weight.
Leader is always a big discussion, open to debate. You know, how much do you have between the weight and the hook?
I like to start off with two foot as a that's just a general preference. If the bass are really aggressive and you're getting a lot of bites, I might shorten that up a little bit.
But if they're lethargic and you're not getting a lot of bites, then I make me make it 3 foot. I've been known to fish them as long as 5 foot.
You know, that's extreme measure, but two to three, 3 foot is like that covers most of the time when you're fishing these.
You can also put creature baits on the back like a Rage Bug or a Space Monkey or something. A little bit more beef on it to get those bigger bass because a lot of times in June, the bigger bass are the first ones to move out deeper.
And so targeting them with a Carolina rig with a larger bait is the way to get to them.
So I hope that helps.
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