Foul Largemouth

By Andrew Ragas

A bad day of fishing is always better than the best day at work. In mid summer, the worst day of weather could be the best day of fishing you’ll ever experience for largemouth bass. The most foul and pervasive summer conditions you can think of can help shape and lead to your best and most aggressive bites of the year.

Summer season delivers heat waves, and with it the oppressive heat bakes water temperatures, halting bass activity and perhaps our motivation to fish altogether. However, the best things to come from heat waves are storms, heavy rainfall, and their ensuing passing fronts on the back end. Mid summer cold fronts might not be as drastic like other seasons, but gloomy rainy weather, overcast skies, and fronts can pass slowly and alter the underwater ecosystem. A foul day in mid summer provides much needed recovery and cooling for lakes and their hot water temperatures, and recovery for bass as they regain activity and feed heavily.

When the going gets tough, the tough anglers will get going and return to the water. This break in the weather, between the dog days, re-activates lake ecosystems again. On heavily vegetated lakes, foul weather sets up an explosive shallow water largemouth bass bite.

Behemoth Bucketmouths

July 2018 was warm and oppressive throughout many regions of the upper Midwest. 90 and 100 degree days were the norm, resulting in hot mid-80 degree water temperatures, many algae blooms, and slow fishing. It wasn’t until late month when a significant weather change finally came, disrupting the heat waves and altering our fishing.

The darker and crummier the mid-summer day, the better this shallow weed bite develops and materializes.

In late month, a massive 4 day cold front was incoming, about to positively change the entire landscape and underwater ecosystem of every bass fishery. The fishing up to this point was unsatisfactory to me, and the day before an important 2-day guide trip allowed me to reconsider my summer strategy of usually fishing cold, deep lakes to counter with summertime heat. Largemouth bass are my most sought after fish species in cold front conditions, and I wanted to try something new to experience. During this trip and the days after, shallow weed bowls, which I otherwise would never fish in mid summer due to their warm surface temps, became my lakes of choice.

Foul weather and cold fronts often worsens the fishing on deep, clear water fisheries because their good visibility and sparser weed growth doesn’t provide fish adequate cover and habitat to help bass and their swim bladders cope with the conditions. However, it improves the fishing and bass activity on fertile, nutrient rich lakes that are shallow, very weedy, and often in summer algae bloom. Their reduced visibility and abundant habitat benefits all species inhabiting in them.

Otherwise mostly unfishable in mid summer due to hot water temperature, stagnation and low dissolved oxygen levels, these lakes cool quickly and recover in summer cold fronts. Their largemouth bass react positively to the lake’s own reaction. On these eutrophic and late mesotrophic waters, largemouth bass use their algae bloom’s low visibility waters to prowl the shallows in stealth. They will also set up in and around the thickest and abundant shallow weed cover and slop for ambushing and feeding on the lake’s bluegills, perch, frogs, and other forage species.

Largemouth bass are masters at adaptation, utilizing a lake’s available habitat and biological changes in benefit to their location and feeding habits. Bass anglers must adapt too, and fish these waters in mid summer when they rapidly recover from heat and become fishable again.

On day-1 of our 2-day summer cold front trip, my guide customer Sam and I experienced one of the best trophy largemouth bass bites in my boat’s history. Air temps in the low 60’s, a big northwest wind, and periodic rain throughout the day fired up the entire ecosystem, stagnant and lifeless just a day earlier, in ways I have never witnessed before.

As a response to the cool down, largemouth slid back into the shallows to feed. Fishing various pockets and sections of shoreline, prowling through the inside and outside weed lines of coontail and surface slop with swim jigs and beefy trailers, we were able to catch largemouth of epic proportions.

Our full day’s catch was upwards of 40 largemouth; a solid day’s work. But our top dozen fish, all caught during a 3 hour midday feeding spree, was an astonishing 50 lb. sack of 18 to 21 inch trophy specimens. The full day encompassed multiple personal bests for Sam, and the fastest action of huge mid summer largemouth I have ever experienced. The weather change, my bass fishing adaptability, and renewed thought made this all possible.

A 6 pounder largemouth is considered a giant for northern bass. Guide customer, Sam Duell, holds one of the biggest and heaviest bucketmouths caught in recent Vilas County, WI fishing history.

Shallow Weed Bowls

These largemouth lakes are usually featureless, lacking topography, structure, depth, and basins. However, many of them in mid summer are rich in near-shore emergent and submergent vegetation, and weed beds galore. Most lakes have a depth consistency of 5 to 10 ft, and can max out at 15 to 20 ft, assuring wintering survival. On these featureless weed bowls, largemouth bass and many of the lake’s other species tend to gravitate to their near-shore areas where habitat is best and most diverse. Anglers must do the same too.

Some shoreline areas can be wood oriented, while others weed oriented. Probing through the shallows and casting or flipping to all targets and open pockets in between weed cover is the name of this game. Coontail and cabbage beds, slop, wood and downed trees, pads, reeds and cattails are just a handful of high percentage targets to look for and focus on.

Shallow oriented fishing is simplistic, visual, and mostly based on your prior knowledge of the lake and where its best habitats are located. It will not rely on electronics for other than water temperature readings, and side-imaging to help identify good weed species and finding the best weed lines and pockets.

Shallow jungle fishing is simple when covering all of the bases. A casting jig and swim jig with an assortment of jig trailers gets fished most often. Then if conditions and depths allow, crankbaits to probe through deeper weedlines and surface baits that can plow through slop are used.

The swim jig and casting jig are two of the most effective lures to employ in this situation. One presentation is built for speed and covering water, and the other for slower fishing and precise lure placements.

Whether fishing intentions are to power fish with a search lure, or to extract bass from high percentage locations and the worst cover, a swim jig and casting jig are universally effective on all shallow largemouth weed bowls.

Whether fishing intentions are to power fish with a search lure, or to extract bass from high percentage locations and the worst cover, a swim jig and big paddletail combo is universally effective on all shallow largemouth weed bowls.

Shade, ambush points, bluegills, and young of the year yellow perch are the main draws to largemouth in these locations. Largemouth bass and bluegill prey connections are most obvious during this time of season. On most algae bloom waters, a dark black/blue or black/chartreuse 3/8 oz. and ½ oz. swim jig paired with a high powering and vibrating 4” paddletail swimmer, or creature will effectively represent a fleeing bluegill that not many other presentations could. For best contrast to poor water clarity, dark jig and trailer colors are preferred at all times.

Trailers are the business end of all jigs, and play a more important role than the weedless properties of the jig itself. Trailers are what ultimately trigger strikes. It’s always important to mix and match between the different variables of tail action, vibration, size, color combination, and how it triggers fish. There are so many potential trailer styles to consider, but I always fish with baits that have previously worked for me as standalone lures (a rig of its own, by itself). From there, odds are excellent that it will work great, and potentially better, when paired with a jig.

On swim jigs, the biggest largemouth I catch are often triggered by a larger bulkier trailer. I like to overpower them in summer with a full 4-inch paddletail that produces a wide tail kick and side to side wobble. Vibration of trailer is the most critical triggering point in reduced visibility/ algae bloom waters. In many murky water clarities and weedy jungles, baits that move too fast may avoid a bass’s strike zone before it could see it and strike. In these situations, I like to slow my retrieve speed and tip the jigs with creatures. Creature baits encompass crayfish variations, and often don’t resemble anything living in the wild. What make them work are their appendages and tails, and bulkiness that helps add size and greater profile to the swim jig. For best color contrast and total jig package, pair the jig with a dark trailer color.

Other presentations besides jig and trailer combos will work. Weighted and weedless 4-5” paddletails with wide tail kick and wobble are good for active fish, and so too is a black and blue Chatterbait Freedom – by Freedom Tackle Corp fished in combo with the same trailer styles.

In high percentage areas holding multiple bass, have some slow presentations and reinforcements accessible. Often, a Texas rigged creature bait, or slither rig flipped into pockets and openings on a flipping stick with braided line extracts fish. Also, weightless and weedless Kalin’s wacko worms flipped into weed pockets and openings, and glided along weedlines, will be the simplest and most effective bait you fish all day.

If light rain conditions become calm and humid, a surface frog such as Vexan Fishing’s Ninja Frog popped and swum through slop will get slurped.

The fishing is simple, but calls for multi-purpose set-ups. Have 2 MH to heavy action rods rigged and ready, and interchange when needed.

I tend to fish swim jigs and paddletails with a MH fast action 7 to 7 ft. 2 in. Vexan Bass and Quantum PT baitcasting rod accompanied by Quantum Icon PT reels with a 7.0:1 gear ratio. This faster gear ratio helps bring in slack line, in addition maintain a quicker retrieve speed without blowing baits by fish. Since we’re extracting bass through cover and poor water clarity, I try to fish swim jigs with braided line as much as possible. Cortland Masterbraid in 20 and 30 lb. size is my preference. Sometimes I also fish the set-up with heavy copolymer line such as Cortland’s Camo (15 lb.), which is strong enough and minimal in stretch to handle the occasional wrap-around from 4 pounders in heavy weeds.

For everything else from froggin’ to pitching jigs, I work with a 7ft 2in heavy fast action custom-built Batson casting rod, paired with a Quantum Tour S3 casting reel spooled with 20 lb. Cortland Masterbraid. In the worst slop conditions I will bust out the heavier fiberglass Lamiglas flipping stick, spooled with all new 50 lb. Cortland Silent Flip.

On swim jigs, the biggest largemouth I catch are often triggered by a larger bulkier trailer. I like to overpower them in summer with a full 4-inch paddletail that produces a wide tail kick and side to side wobble. Vibration of trailer is the most critical triggering point in reduced visibility/ algae bloom waters.

Even though summer delivers oppressive heat waves that halt fishing success, there’s always relief and recovery on its way from the incoming fronts that follow. If you ever thought shallow, warm water, weed infested lakes were unfishable this time of season, reconsider when a coldfront strikes. Water temperatures will cool and recover, re-activating lake ecosystems again and awakening fish species from summer dormancy. This not only applies for largemouth bass and other warm water species, but for walleyes, northern pike and muskies too. When the habitat is just right and plentiful, foul weather sets up the best largemouth bass bite you might ever experience in summer, and in your lifetime.

Andrew Ragas splits time between the Chicago area and Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Based in Minocqua, WI, he specializes in trophy bass fishing and offers guided trips from May thru October. While big bass is the passion, he dabbles in multi-species as well. He may be visited online at www.northwoodsbass.com