Entry 196-2

How Mr. Money Finds Bass in Three Stories of Water

Part 2: The Quickest Way to Find Bass

The two quickest ways to locate bass in any lake is to determine in what depth of the thermocline the bass are concentrating, and where the bottom intersects that thermocline. If the bass are suspended, they’ll be holding at or just above the thermocline, but your best bet to catch them will be on some kind of cover at the depth of the thermocline .

Pinpointing the thermocline is relatively easy. As you motor your boat across the lake, watch the depth where you see the most fish because they’ll be holding above or right at the thermocline. Study your lake map, and search for areas where the thermocline intersects the bottom. Often that’s where you’ll find the most bass, particularly in cover at that water depth. There the bass will have a place to hold in a water temperature that’s comfortable for them, and where the most baitfish will be.

Another technique for finding bass quickly is to fish several main river points, since points will run from shallow water to deep water and often drop off into a river or a creek channel. By fishing through three stories of water, you either can learn or confirm at what water depth the bass are holding. If you fish those points when current’s coming across the point, or wind’s blowing onto the point, your chances of catching bass are much better.

I’ll fish a point with three different lures. First I’ll use a spinner bait on that point to fish from the surface all the way to the bottom and every depth in-between. Next, I’ll fish the point with a crankbait, generally one that runs from 5 feet down to about 8 or 10 feet to check out the bass in that middle story of the water. The third bait I fish with is a plastic worm or a jig rigged Texas style, which enables me to fish the bottom story of the water from shallow all the way out to the deepest end of the point and then usually over and off the river ledge where the point is. Then I can establish the water depth at which the bass are holding, the lure they want, and perhaps even the color of the lure they prefer.

When I catch a bass on a point, I first look at the spot where I’ve gotten the bite, mentally mark that place and use my trolling motor to go there. With my depth finder, I’ll attempt to locate the cover the bass may have been holding on when I’ve caught it. I’ll also ask myself if the region holds a little drop-off, some wood cover, a big rock or grass? What kind of ambush cover have the bass used on that point to attack my bait? If I can determine the answers to those questions, then I’ll pinpoint the water depth where the bass are feeding as well as the type and the color of the lure and the kind of cover where they want to hold.

I may try several different types and various colors of lures to more fine-tune the exact bait that the bass want to bite on that day, based on the weather and the water conditions. Fishing several points to define where the thermocline is in the lake helps me decide at what depth the fish are concentrating, and the lures I need to fish on that day to catch the bass in that lake. Your knowing about and identifying the thermocline is most important to your bass-fishing success when the weather’s really, really hot or very cold. Between those two times of the years, the thermocline still can aid you in understanding how to find bass.

A successful bass fisherman also needs to know where bass tend to hold depending on the water’s temperature. Water temperature tells the bass when the time has arrived for them to get ready to spawn, when they need to be cleaning off their beds to prepare for the spawn, when the spawn ends, and when the time has come for the bass to move into or out of deep water. The water temperature combined with where bass are in a lake depending on that water temperature are other key ingredients to finding bass. In the early spring when the temperature climbs into that 60-degree range, the bass will be in the pockets in the coves, searching for places to spawn. When the water’s in the 40- to 50-degree range, the bass most likely will be on points, creeks, river ledges and creek channel bends.

Next: Fishing Shallow Water

Contents:

• Part 1: George Cochran’s Fishing Philosophy
• Part 2: The Quickest Way to Find Bass
• Part 3: Fishing Shallow Water
• Part 4: Suspended Bass in the Middle Story
• Part 5: Bottom Bass and Other Keys to Pinpointing Bass