Entry 148-4

Shaw Grigsby Talks About Hot-Weather Bassing

Find Deep Fish Quick

Shaw GrigsbyEditor’s Note: When the weather’s so hot you can fry eggs on the sidewalk, bass often won’t bite. But tournament fishermen like Shaw Grigsby of Gainesville, Florida, have to fish and catch bass regardless of the weather conditions. This week, Grigsby, who travels the country participating in bass-fishing tournaments, has his own TV show and also commentates on ESPN for the Bassmasters Classic, shares tactics he uses to catch bass when most people sit at home in their air-conditioned houses, sipping glasses of iced tea.

There are two steps to catching bass in hot weather. First, you have to find the fish, and then you have to catch the fish. One of my favorite tactics for finding bass is deep cranking. I like to use a deep-diving crankbait because it allows me to cover a lot of water, and I can fish different depths of water fairly quickly. Once I get a bite or catch a bass and know where the bass are holding and how deep they’re holding, then I’ll put the crankbait down and start fishing that area more thoroughly and slower with either a Carolina-rigged worm or a Carolina-rigged lizard.

Shaw GrigsbyMy favorite crankbait to find bass is a Strike King Series 5. This bait comes with great action built into it and a wide variety of different colors to match almost any water and weather condition. These lures run down about 12-feet deep, which is the depth in most lakes where bass like to hold when the weather’s really hot. Sometimes the bass will move even deeper out into the 15-, 18- or even 20-foot-depth water. Most of the time, even in the hottest weather bass seem to prefer to hold in 6- to 12-foot depths in most lakes throughout the country.

I like to position my boat in 15- to 20-foot-deep water. I can cast up into the 6- to 8-foot-deep water, and then work the Strike King Series 5 crankbait down to the deeper depths. If there’s a brush pile or a stump, I want to bump the crankbait into that structure, hesitate the lure and then swim it back to the boat.

Shaw GrigsbyI like to cast the crankbait on a 7-foot fiberglass rod, particularly the Quantum 706, which is a medium-heavy-action rod. For a reel, I like the Quantum Energy reel, which has a 5X gear ratio reel. You really don’t want to use a 6.2 or a 7.1 gear ratio reel because those gear ratios are too high-speed for deep cranking. I like a rod that brings in 18 to 20 inches of line per turn on the handle. These reels have a lot of power, and they keep the crankbait moving in the right speed and more importantly, at a comfortable speed. I usually fish 12-pound-test Stren line, but if I want my bait to go a little deeper, I’ll drop back to a 10-pound-test line. The 10-pound-test line allows me to go down another 2 feet.




 

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