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Where is the best place to fish in a lake with dead aquatic vegetation?
If you're fishing in a lake with dead aquatic vegetation, it's important to understand that dying weeds consume oxygen, which can drive baitfish and bass away from those areas. Here's what you should do:
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Move to Deeper Water: As the weeds die off, the bass and baitfish will move to areas where the weeds are still green and healthy. Look for deeper weed lines, typically in the 10 to 25-foot range, where the vegetation is still thriving. These areas will have more oxygen and will attract baitfish, which in turn attract bass.
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Focus on Structure: If your lake has minimal healthy vegetation, shift your focus to structure. Structure refers to any changes in the lake bottom's contour, such as humps, ridges, ledges, drop-offs, creek channels, and long tapering points. These areas can hold bass, especially if they provide some form of cover or ambush points for feeding.
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Look for Other Types of Cover: Besides vegetation, bass will also relate to other types of cover such as rocks and wood. Riprap, seawalls, dock pilings, and laydowns can all be productive areas. These structures often attract algae, which in turn attract baitfish.
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Use Appropriate Lures: Depending on the type of cover and structure you're targeting, choose your lures accordingly. For deeper weed lines, finesse jigs can be effective. For rocky areas, crankbaits or spinnerbaits can work well. When fishing around wood, consider using Texas-rigged soft plastics or jigs to avoid snagging.
By focusing on these areas and adjusting your tactics, you'll increase your chances of finding and catching bass in a lake with dead aquatic vegetation. Happy fishing!
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Transcript
Video01:17
02:39
Summer Bass Fishing Techniques and Tips | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource → So let's start off with, with the shallow
fish. What I like to do is, is I like to find lakes
that have a lot of vegetation in them. If there's a lot of hydrilla, a lot of milfoil,
coontail, lily pads, any kind of like this got a lot of vegetation like that. Those weeds create a lot of oxygen, a lot
of shade, lot of shelter and lot of cover. Bait fish naturally go in there, and insects
also feed and live in there. That's naturally gonna attract the bass. So those are areas to hit if your lake has
a lot of weeds and stuff, focus on those areas during the summertime, you'd be really surprised
how many fish are in there. It just depends on the kind of weeds you have,
whether you can hit it with, you know, you get a go punching with jigs and punch through
that matted vegetation or if it's just under the surface, you might be able to bring a
spinnerbait over the top of them or shallow diving crankbait, something like that. But that's the areas I would target if that's
the majority of the cover available on the lake. Now if your lake doesn't have a lot of vegetation,
older reservoirs sometimes don't have that. Now you got to focus more on structure. And what I mean by structure, that's any kind
of contour change on the bottom. You're looking for humps, ridges, ledges,
drop-offs, creek channels, long tapering points, things like that is what you want to look
for, for structure.
Transcript
Video00:00
01:25
3 Proven Spots For Quickly Finding Fish in Small Lakes | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource → Glenn: Hey folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com
and I’m here with Hank Parker with another edition of Hank Parker's Tips. This week's question comes from Jeremy McConnell
from Greenville, Michigan. And he says, "When you're fishin' unfamiliar
small natural lakes, what are the three areas you focus on for fishing?" Hank: Well, that is a pretty tough question
because there's so many variations there. Number one, if I'm fishing on a lake, a small
lake that I can cover, and I've never fished it before, the first thing I'm gonna look
for is aquatic vegetation: grass beds, lily pads, those sorts of things. If it's void of that, then I'm gonna look
for brush. If it's void of that, then I'm gonna look
for bars or points and rock. I like rock. So there's a lotta different types of structure,
but I'm gonna be looking for whatever structure is in that lake. And I'll be honest with ya, I like lakes that
don't have a whole lot of structure. I go to these lakes where guys build lakes
and they leave half of the lake standing timber, that drives me nuts. It's so hard to fish it, there's a million
places for the fish to hide. But when you've got a lake that doesn't have
a lotta structure, what structure is there is gonna be productive. So I try to look at that lake and analyze
really, really quick what might be there, whether there's...where there's brush piles,
where there's grass beds, or stumps, but I'm always looking for that aquatic vegetation
first.
Transcript
Video11:15
12:32
Fall Finesse Jig Tips You Need To Know | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource → drop down into the mid-40s, I slow it down
a bit, and I start moving out. The fish are now moving out to deeper water,
where they're gonna stay for the rest of the winter. So, I don't go as deep. And in particular, the weeds will start to
die off. The shallower the weeds are, the quicker they'll
die off. They start to consume oxygen, which, as I
said, the baitfish, they're looking for oxygen-rich water, so they won't go where those weeds
are dying. So don't even bother fishing that area. Instead, I'll fish this finesse jig on those
outside deeper weed lines. In that 10 to 20-foot, 10 to 25-foot range
where the weeds are still green, the fish, the perch, shad, bluegill, what have you,
well, they'll load up in those areas, and that's where the bass will be. You throw on the outside edges and just work
that bait up and down along there, and you can catch a lot of fish that are sitting down
there. And as the fall progresses, I'll move out
to main lake points, main lake structure, like humps, rock humps, brush piles. I'm looking for, now, river bends, river channels,
ledges, drop-offs, that sort of thing. And when I do that, I don't lift up on it
as much, lift up on the rod and let it drop as much. Especially when I'm out in deeper water, I'm
throwing up to shallower. Because what happens is that, you know, it's
like this, right?
Transcript
Video09:53
12:41
Where Do Bass Go During Summer? (And How To Catch Them) by TacticalBassin → that key structure you're going to have a lot more vegetation and stuff in the backs of the cuts because your cuts aren't as sheer and deep like the canyons like the highland reservoirs you're going to have a lot more vegetation back in the back you know the grass like i said grass is key look for the thickest darkest nastiest grass you know fresh when i say nasty fresh looking grass thick grass because that's where those fish are going to hunker in and that's where you're going to take advantage with the flip baits and the frogs that sort of stuff natural lakes same thing those fish are going to disperse about half your fish are going to stay shallow about half your fish are going to stay head out deep you know i always think of clear lake because that was my home lake you know those fish are looking for grass lines so i like to go out as far as i can can and find that grass line edge typically it's going to be where where you we talk about color line hopefully you guys understand what color line is it's where the light penetration can't reach bottom anymore or doesn't reach uh as as easily as it does in the shallow and you'll notice that kind of color line is kind of the edge or the barrier of where that grass meets where that where that grass can get that sunlight and really
Transcript
Video02:53
04:12
Fall Fishing: How To Catch Bass (This Works!) | How To | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource → Now, let's take a little bit more consideration. Let's think about cover. Cover is the form of anything that's not part
of the bottom structure. So weeds, for example. There's really three different types. There's three… There's weeds, there's rocky cover, and then
there's wood. So let's start with weeds. Weeds, what the bass like to do…or the baitfish
will like to do is get up in those weeds and it helps them hide from their predators. And it helps them feed because it attracts
insects and zooplankton. And that's what the baitfish feed on. And the weeds in the summer to the beginning
of fall are very abundant and really thick in a lot of lakes and that's where the…that's
why…one of the reasons why the baitfish will be up shallow. Now as fall progresses and the water temperature
begins to drop, the weeds start to die off in the shallow areas first, and progressively
deeper and deeper. Well as they die, the weeds consume oxygen. Well, that's not what the baitfish want. Like I said earlier, they want oxygen-rich
water, so they'll move away from that. If you find dead and dying weeds in the fall,
don't fish it because chances are there's not gonna be a lot of fish in there. Move out deeper till you find the greener
weeds and that's where you're gonna find the baitfish. Until progressively towards the middle to
end of fall you're fishing the outside weed lines and 10 to 20 feet of water. And that actually concentrates a lot of fish
too.
Transcript
Video04:12
05:37
Fall Fishing: How To Catch Bass (This Works!) | How To | Bass Fishing by Bass Fishing Tips & Techniques by BassResource → So you can really find good concentrations
of bass on these outside weed lines, because that's where they're feeding on the baitfish,
towards the middle and in the fall. Now, what if your lake doesn't have a lot
of weeds? Well, like I said, there's two other types
of cover available. There's rock and there are woods. So let's talk about rock. Rock, for example, is, riprap on faces of
dams, or they can be seawalls, anything that's made out of a hard, rocky surface. It could be a chunk of rock on a flat, that
sort of thing. Algae will grow on rocks, and that attracts
the baitfish to feed on. And of course, like I said, where the baitfish
are, that's where the bass are. So rocks and riprap can be really good areas
to find fish, especially in the fall, because that's again, where the bass are gonna be
feeding on those baitfish. What is the same sort of thing? Wood is like dock pilings, or bridge pilings,
docks that can be wood, laydowns or logs on the bottom of the lake. Again, it's organic compound. Algae grows on it. The same thing there, you're gonna find baitfish
in those areas. So while you're looking… In the fall, when you're moving from deep
from summer, shallow in mid-fall, and then back to deep again, look for these types of
cover to find…well, that's where the bass will be staging along, either moving or shallow
or moving back out deep. That's where they're going to be hanging out
on as fall progresses.
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