Watch this site for tournament reports as the Strike Pro Team
competes on the pro circuits throughout the 2012 season!
Editor’s Note: Strike King Pro Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Missouri, one of the most-successful professional bass fishermen, depends on the tremendous database he keeps in his head that he’s acquired from bass fishing for many years to win bass tournaments. He won the BASS Elite Series Tournament on the Arkansas River in 2011. This week, Brauer will tell us how to catch hot-water bass.
Part 1: Denny Brauer Fishes for Bass at Night in Hot Weather and Water Conditions
Question: Denny, right now temperatures are reaching over 100-degrees Fahrenheit in the South, with a heat index of 110 to 115 degrees. How do you find and catch bass under these hot-weather conditions?
Brauer: Hot weather is no longer just a southern phenomenon. Missouri and much of the Midwest also are experiencing 100-degree-plus temperatures. All the landscape where I live is a nice shade of brown right now. We’ve had 100-degree-plus temperatures with about a 115-heat index for over 8 days. Under that type of extreme heat, very-few anglers want to go out on the water to fish, because catching bass in 90-degree water is difficult. But anglers won’t give-up fishing; they’ll just change the hours when they fish. Most bass fishermen right now are fishing at night.
The best baits for nighttime fishing in hot weather are Strike King spinner baits, the Strike King Rage Thumper Worm and Strike King buzzbaits in darker colors. You’ll get more bites and catch more bass fishing at night in this very-hot weather, If the body of water you’re fishing has a thermocline in it, search for places where the thermocline comes into contact with a key piece of structure, like a point, a ledge or an underwater treetop. These structures can be found at 20- to 30-feet deep.
At night, the bass move up to more-shallow water to feed, so catching them is easy. In the daytime, bass concentrate under boat docks where they find shade from the heat and plenty of bluegills, one of the bass’s favorite baits at this time of the year. I also like to fish boat docks in hot weather, since they have some type of brush underneath them.
To find and catch bass at this time of the year, look for areas on the body of water that you fish that can breathe (receives influxes of aerated water), such as creeks running into a main lake, eddy currents, drain-offs where water drains into a lake or windy points. Fish those areas rather than moving into pockets or coves that don’t have any moving water. Bass want to be comfortable, just like you do. So, shade and cool-water runoffs are very important to them. Look for shade, higher-oxygen content and cooler water.
I won the 1998 Bassmaster Classic at High Rock Lake in North Carolina fishing in the middle of the day in 2-foot-deep water. There was more oxygen in that 2 feet of water than in any-other parts of the lake. The bait was holding in that shallow water, and the bass were concentrating there, feeding on the bait. Most bass fishermen overlook boat waves. 
I won that tournament on the main part of the lake, where there was a lot of boat action and a lot of waves hitting the bank. We know that wind blowing into a point oxygenates the water, thereby causing the bass to bite. But we forget boats make a wave action that crashes against the bank, oxygenates the water and causes a feeding frenzy on the shad, which makes the bass bite. So, waves from water skiers and other boats oxygenate the water, causing bass to feed in shallow water, even in the middle of the day.
