Entry 148-5

Shaw Grigsby Talks About Hot-Weather Bassing

No Lips in Hot Weather

Editor’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.

Many people forget there’s not an inappropriate time to fish a Strike King lipless crankbait. I always have one tied onto one of my rods whether I’m fishing a tournament, practice fishing or fishing for fun. Even in the hot summer months, you’ll see bass schooling, busting shad and chasing shad on the surface. During the summer months, bass are mainly feeding on shad, so I’ll fish with Strike King’s Diamond Shad crankbait in shad colors like chrome, chrome with a black back, chrome blue, and any of the bleeding-bait colors.

I cast these lures on a 7-foot fiberglass Tour Edition rod, and I change my reels from a 5:1 to a 7:1 gear ratio to get more speed out of the reel and the bait. I like the Tour Edition Quantum 1170 reel for fishing the lipless crankbait because it’s a very high-speed reel that I leaver 12-pound-test green Stren line spooled on it.

If I’m fishing ledges, I’ll cast the bait out, let it fall to the bottom, rip it up off the bottom really hard and then I let it fall back toward the bottom. I‘ll usually rip the bait 3 or 4 feet off the bottom, which I believe triggers bass to bite in hot weather. Then, just as the bait starts to fall back, the bass will usually eat the lure. If I don’t get a strike the first time I rip the lure off the bottom, I let it fall back to the bottom and rip it up again. Next, I rip and drop the bait all the way back to the boat.

I think this type of retrieve triggers the same type of bite you may get from a bad dog. For example, if you’ve got a dog snarling, growling and snapping at you, and you try to stare the dog down, most of the time he won’t bite you if you’re looking at him. But, if you turn to walk away, the dog will probably bite you. The same is true of a bass. When a lipless crankbait comes up off the bottom, it excites the bass and makes the fish want to bite. When you kill the lure and let it fall back to the bottom, that’s when the bass will attack. Even when bass aren’t really hungry, I can get a reaction strike using this technique.

Although I mostly use the 1/2-ounce Diamond Shad crankbaits, in the hot summer months, I’ll also use a 3/4-ounce-size Diamond Shad lipless crankbait. I prefer the big crankbait in the hot summer months because a 3/4-ounce bait falls faster than the 1/2-ounce bait will. Too, I can cast the 3/4-ounce Diamond Shad further than I can the 1/2-ounce. I believe the shad are bigger during the late summer then they are at other times of the year.

Another reason I’ve tied a Diamond Shad onto my rod is because you never know when a school of bass will start blowing up on the surface and attacking baitfish. If you’re fishing main river points or main creek points, and current’s coming through the lake, many times the bass will chase the shad off the point and toward the surface. Then the bass will blow up on the surface and attack schools of shad. If you don’t have a lipless crankbait tied on, you won’t be able to reach down quickly, grab a rod and cast to those surfacing bass.

Too, I can reach out and touch those bass that would be out of range for the smaller bait. Because the bait falls faster, most of the time if the lure lands in the school, the bass will hit it as soon as it enters the water. If my cast goes past the school with the high-speed reel, I can burn the reel through the school and then kill the bait just as it gets to the edge of the school to trigger a strike.

Another tactic I use is searching for bait on points. I can fish every depth of water all along a point, I can fish the top of the water by burning with a fast retrieve. I can fish the middle story of the water by slowing down my retrieve and letting the bait swim through that middle story. Or, I can fish right through the bottom by slowing my retrieve down even more. Really and truly, there’s no depth of water you can’t fish and trigger strikes with the Diamond Shad.

Contents:

• Part 1: When You Can Fry Eggs on the Sidewalk
• Part 2: When the Water’s Hot Up To the Top
• Part 3: Summertime Carolina Rigging
• Part 4: Find Deep Fish Quick
• Part 5: No Lips in Hot Weather