Mark Menendez – Sometimes Summer Fishing’s a Drag

by Mark Menendez

As we go into summer and water temperatures become warmer, Bass activity tends to slow down a little bit, and there’s always a big party right after spawning. The bass tend to spawn, move out to the first structure, and you get big groups of fish out there that are easier to catch.

Typically, big crank baits, big worms, big jigs, fast moving baits, it’s a lot of fun, but a trip last week yielded a drag; it was the only way to get a bite.

I was actually fishing with a couple of high school kids that made the national championship on Kentucky Lake, Troy Harris, and Merritt Arnold from Georgia. We found that with a little north wind and high blue bird skies that the fishing was slow, but we could get into groups of fish.

It took us to drag Strike King heavy hook football jigs with black and blue Rage Craws to get any bites whatsoever. And you couldn’t even feel the bites, which this is a transition from the euphoria of the earlier summer when the fish first move out to the ledges, to having been there for awhile, with the water temperatures rising.

When you add those conditions, to lots of fishing pressure on Kentucky lake. But we managed to figure out how to catch them by dragging the jig on 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu Fluorocarbon line with a 3/4 ounce Strike King football jig and a black rage crawl on the back of it. That was our best bite.

I tried to speed things up a little bit and tried to get them to chase by throwing a 1-ounce Strike King Bottom Dweller spinnerbait and drug it on the bottom – the bite was simply, no more than the blades quit turning on the spinnerbait. But, the quality went from  a 3-pound average to a 4 pound average with that big spinnerbait.

So as we move towards the summer, remember to keep things on a slow drag. But once you get to an area and you find a few fish, be very, very patient and very diligent. The reason is that even though those fish are out there in 22 to 25 feet of water, they can still get fired up and you can still get good catches out there by dragging the bait, not hopping it.

The best thing this time of the year is to keep literally dragging the lure and keeping in contact with the bottom as the water temperatures go up.

I hope this helps you catch more fish in the summer, Happy 4^th of July from the Menendez family, and I’ll check in again soon.

In the meantime, check in with me on my Facebook page