Lake Tactics for Large Mouth Bass

More American anglers fish for Large-mouth bass than for any other fish. From this standpoint the Large-mouth is the All American game fish. Certainly his adaptability to many waters and conditions, his willingness to take all kinds of artificial flies and lures, as well as live bait, and his gameness when hooked justify the American fisherman’s enthusiasm for this grand fighting fish.

Just as with trout, it saves a lot of time, is more fun, and helps you catch more fish, if you have some fairly easy way of telling where in a lake or stream the bass will be on the day and at the time you go fishing for them. The best way to do this is to think like a bass.
Like other fish, bass put in most of their lives doing five things. Ill repeat them because they’re important: First, getting into a water temperature that is comfortable. Second, feeding. Third, resting. Fourth, hiding from their enemies. Fifth, spawning.
The first, and most important of these from the standpoint of locating bass in a lake, is finding and going to a water temperature they like. This means that a fisherman’s thermometer is his best friend in finding bass.
We have studied this temperature business in connection with where to find trout, but most bass lakes—deep ones,
anyway—are different from streams, ponds or shallow and protected lakes, because most bass lakes are stratified as to temperature.

WATER TEMPERATURE IN SHALLOW LAKES
In small or shallow lakes or those closely protected from wind by trees, the water temperature just drops steadily from the surface to the bottom without the stratification mentioned above. Lakes under twenty-five feet in depth usually do not stratify, while those over thirty-five or forty feet deep usually do.
Basing our figures on the average of bass lakes in the summer time we can tell very closely at what depths below the surface you will find different water temperatures—if we know the temperature of the surface water.
Now, if you know what water temperature each species of fish finds most comfortable, you can tell at what depth in the ‘lake this kind of fish will stay if he can, provided again you start by knowing the temperature of the surface water.

BAROMETRIC PRESSURE
Some other natural factors have an effect on fish, too. When barometric pressure goes down, fish, especially in lakes, go into deeper water. Stormy weather, which usually means a falling barometer, has the same effect.
FEEDING PERIODS
Because the bass get hungry, they sometimes have to go out of the most comfortable water temperatures into warmer water (in summer) or to colder water (in winter) to get a good meal. That’s why you find bass feeding in shallow water, wanner than they like, in summer evenings, early mornings or on summer nights. But you will usually find that these feeding periods are at times when the shallow water will be the least amount warmer than the bass like.
About the only exceptions to this are the solunar feeding periods—governed apparently by the same forces which control the tides.

HIDING FROM ENEMIES
The necessity of hiding from enemies, such as ospreys, mink, and otter, causes bass to choose positions under logs, rocks, weeds, and other cover. These hiding places also serve to conceal bass while they are waiting for minnows, frogs or other food to come close enough to catch.

SPAWNING PERIODS
When it comes time for bass to spawn, they go into shallow water to build their nests. The water temperature is commonly the determining factor in causing this migration.
A combination of these conditions governs where in a lake the bass will be at any given time. Of all of these conditions, water temperature is both the most important and easiest for the fisherman to determine. All you need is a thermometer.
From many years’ study of the habits of bass, trout and other game fish, I have charted where the different kinds of fish will be at various surface water temperatures.

Let’s suppose you are going fishing in your favorite lake for large-mouth bass. If you stick your stream thermometer in the water, and it reads 55° F., you might as well go home and keep warm—or you can fish for trout, walleyes, great northern pike or even for small-mouth bass if there are any of these fish around—but you won’t catch many large-mouth in water as cold as that. They seldom feed in water under 55°.

55°•65° Water Temperature Range
A few days later, you may go back to the lake and find the water between 55° and 65°. In this range the large-mouth begin to liven up. The farther above 55°—up towards 65°—the water gets the better the bass feed. Above 60° bass fishing begins to get good. In this range of temperature—in the evening, early morning or at night, in normal weather—you will find large-mouth bass in shallow water, from one to four feet deep, on mud bottom along the shore lines. They will be lurking in the edge of rushes, under or near under-water logs or brush, on shallow mud bars, in weed beds or under low overhanging foliage.
Now that we have located our bass, let’s see if we can get one to take a fly. Put the boat about thirty-five or forty feet from the edge of those rushes. As you are rigging up your tackle and bringing the boat into position, watch closely to see if there are any natural rises. If the bass are taking aquatic insects on the surface, bass bugs are the preferred method. In this temperature bracket, however, free surface feeding on insects is not so common. Not locating any rises, let’s put on a streamer fly. I like a six or seven foot leader for ordinary fly fishing for bass, one tapered from .020 to .014 or .013. If the water is especially clear and’ still (not ruffled by any breeze), a nine to twelve foot leader tapered to .012 will be better; and if the water is very shallow or the fish particularly scary, then a fifteen foot leader is still better.
Most bass fishermen use a short three or four foot leader. I admit that this takes a lot of bass, but it is just as easy, or easier, to cast a six or seven foot leader—better for some bass flies—and the longer leaders will definitely bring more strikes under many conditions than will the same fly fished on a shorter leader. Bass are not as easily frightened as trout, but if you will use on bass the same stalking-your-fish attitude that is absolutely necessary with trout, you will take more bass than you would otherwise.