I’ve been reading about fall, and how it’s just around the corner. That might be true but here’s the deal: It’s not fall yet. It’s the end of summer. That’s not the same thing, not even close.
Before we get into that, though, I want to say a few words about what’s going on down here. The water’s down in most places. Basically, it’s still high but below flood level. About all that’s left is cleanup. That’s not the end of the world for the streets and land, but it’s a huge mess for those who had water get into their houses. I’m guessing it’ll be a year before they get back to normal.
We’ve had a lot of snake bites over the past couple of weeks. Most of them are cottonmouth. The humans who got bit will all recover so far as I know. But it takes a lot of medical care. From what I understand the venom leaves serious tissue damage.
I don’t know about the pets. I’ve been told several of them have been bitten. I suppose they survived. I haven’t heard otherwise, anyway.
One thing that is interesting is the number of dead alligators and deer that I’ve seen along the roads. The alligators aren’t all that unusual. You see where they’ve been run over pretty often but you hardly ever see a dead deer. There just aren’t that many of them. Lately, however, I’ve seen at least a half-dozen. The water’s been hard on everybody and everything.
Back to fishing:
These are what I call the blah days. It’s the end of summer. That means the air is starting to cool, but not by much. The days are getting shorter, but only by a few minutes. The water temperatures are high, but levels are mostly low. The fish are scattered and aren’t doing much of anything. This is typically the time of the year when you’ll catch less weight than at any other time.
The late summer approach that I’ve developed over the years is to fish with smaller lures and to target isolated pieces of cover. I try to catch numbers rather than big fish. My thinking is that if I can get enough of them into the boat some of them will be respectable.
Typically I throw baits like a 1/8-ounce buzzbait, a tiny spinnerbait or a Strike King 1.0 crankbait. Any of them will come pretty close to what they’re eating. Despite what you hear and read, most of the shad and other baitfish at this time of the year are small. If they were born in April or May, they just don’t get that big by August and September.
I do flip and pitch some. My first, and usually my only, choice is a 4-inch tube weighted with a 3/16 or 1/4-ounce sinker. I want something that’s about the right size and not too intrusive. That’s the thing about late summer. Most of the bass are not aggressive right now.
They’ll eat something if it looks good, but they won’t go to any great lengths to get it. You have to go slow and easy to catch them. In another month or so when things really start to change that won’t be the case.
We’ll talk about that next week.