Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

yes i know you all are rakin leaves and shovelin snow off the boat.. well sparky toss an extra log on da fire..i am about to teach ya a thing or three..

since it is a haul to the nearest smallie lake-3.5 hour drive- i'll focus on largemouth..

here in the fall-fall being anytime the water temp drops 20 degrees below summer water temp-it was 78 degrees this morning.. shad start to spawn in the shallows..where there is shad, bass will follow.. now gizzard shad are a spawn and bail type fish. they tend to use any sun radiated source to lay there eggs on..normally rocks,cement,steel..since lakes everywhere are built up the pattern is almost the same..rip rap,docks,or boat ramps..

in detail rip rap-chunk rock deposited in the lake to reduce erosion to property- since shad can and do spawn in these rocks they spawn as shallow as possible. most of the time in less than 1 foot of water..

docks having fished alot of differant lakes. let me tell ya every lake is differant..the key is to find the older cement pillar docks the very shallowest of these pillars are #1 the hardest to get to and #2 have the gnarlest crap around them..


now we move on to my personal favorite, cement boat ramps..
lake front owners have these placed in the water. several differant ways.. most are a "drop it" on the bottom type.
they are never removed unless they break..mostly they have been in the lake for the past 10-20 years. over time the wave action and regular bank erosion cause these ramps to be 2-3 feet higher than the surrounding lake bottom.

(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a240/zook_n_stien/9-9-09highrock002.jpg)

note the brush growing between the ramp and the lake bed..

since shad love to use these for spawning the rarely used cement ramp hold bass off the edges or off the end..

when fishing these structure a crankbait or a fluke is a the best to use..as for the crankbait what ever color seems to work on your particular lake. in a shallow crank - i use bandit100, speed traps, or norman baby lil n's. flukes are trickier since the bass are mauling 2.5"-3" shad a 6" fluke may largely be ignored..perhaps you could use a tube -we don't use tubes here-

the trick is to get the bait as skinny as possable. it's ok wack the bank if ya have to. catching a large bass in 6" of water is a kin to having a cinder block thrown in the lake.. i would recommend loading your reel with some heavy line as rip rap and docks tend to eat the best mono you can buy..i use 15-20 pound test mono remember your not going for depth here..
not to mention haul bass like the 8 pounder i caught this morning out of a brush pile..

yeah i know what does a redneck who only fishes 200 days a year know??...a lot more than i'll tell ya here...

zooker