Flipping jigs around shallow wood cover and burning spinnerbaits through emergent vegetation worked well for anglers all spring. Now, as summer starts to burn a path across the nation, anglers face the daunting task of finding, let alone catching, bass from much deeper water. One angler in particular, Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League competitor Rick La Point, literally makes a living catching bass in depths of 40 to 100 feet on Missouri’s Table Rock Lake.
Operating as a guide on the famed Missouri impoundment near Kimberling City, Mo., La Point has nearly perfected the art of extracting deep-water bass over the last nine years. Not only does he make money guiding with these techniques, but he has also won his fair share of summer tournaments on the lake as well.
Locating fish
Where does one begin finding bass in a lake that is 200 feet deep in spots and occupies more than 43,000 surface acres, you might ask? “I start by idling around in creek channels and river bends, looking for breaks with timber on them,” La Point said.
Relying heavily on the use of electronics and a clear understanding of what his fishfinder depicts on its display, La Point will find fish suspending in treetops or hovering near the bottom along channel breaklines where the shallower bank breaks off into the creek channel. The depth he finds the fish on his electronics dictates how deep to start fishing.
“When I find fish suspended in the thermocline, I feel that those are actively feeding fish,” La Point said.
Those suspended fish are actually very catchable bass, which goes against what most anglers have been taught about suspending fish. La Point feels they are in the thermocline because the baitfish are there, and they are more susceptible to his offerings. Once he figures out the depth, he will go to each of his next areas, looking for fish at those same depths, and start to form a pattern to be used all over the lake.
Another technique La Point has used is finding fish schooling on the surface or other signs of baitfish in the area, like birds circling overhead. Last summer, La Point found an area that bass were busting on the surface. He pulled into the area and caught more than 40 bass longer than 15 inches, and 12 of those bass weighed more than 4 pounds – mostly spotted bass.
Presenting your bait
La Point keeps his summertime fishing simple. He only throws a handful of finesse baits and jigging spoons to unsuspecting bass, and he changes as the bass change throughout the season.
“Swimming a grub catches deep bass exceptionally well early and late in the summer,” La Point said. However, during the hottest parts of summer, more vertical presentations like a drop-shot finesse worm or jighead worm produce better.
“I prefer to use a jigging spoon any time the bass are active enough to take it, because you’ll catch bigger bass on the spoon,” La Point said.
La Point has mastered the art of displaying his lures on his fishfinder and precisely getting his bait in front of aggressive suspending fish. To catch suspended fish consistently, he immediately drops his spoon or drop-shot down as soon as fish appear on the fishfinder. More often than not the strike is immediate, but that is not where La Point stops. When fighting a hooked bass, he will usually see more bass following on the fishfinder. Instructing his partners to drop their bait to the oncoming fish often results in double catches and many times a larger fish. Early last summer, La Point and his son doubled up on a 4-pound spotted bass and a 4 1/2-pound smallmouth with this technique.
With a grub or jighead worm, he will cast the bait to submerged trees and let it sink on slack line. This allows him to back off the fish and make a more subtle presentation.
“Usually the fish get in visible trees first thing in the summer, but then they move out to deeper trees as the summer progresses,” LaPoint said.
A slow, methodical retrieve will often trigger strikes. Keeping color selection simple, he opts to use only smoke when choosing a grub. Smoke is subtle enough to work in clearwater areas and dark enough to work in more stained areas.
Drop-shot fishing for La Point is strictly vertical. Whether bass are suspended in treetops or hunkered down on bottom, a drop-shot can get to the fish quickly while offering a more subtle presentation than a jigging spoon. Basically La Point starts with a heavy weight to get down to the fish quickly, and above that he ties a small bait-holder hook that he sticks through the nose of a 4-inch watermelon or green pumpkin worm. The rig is simple but highly effective for summer bass.
He drops the bait down to the fish and then lightly shakes his rod tip to give the worm a quivering action. When a bass loads up on his rod, it merely takes an upward sweeping motion to hook the fish. A large spinning reel with light line and a good drag coupled with a long, medium-light spinning rod enables him to fight the largest of bass.
Jigging spoons account for a majority of La Point’s bass during the summer because he finds that the spoon tempts aggressive big bass better than other alternatives. He has caught largemouth bass weighing nearly 8 pounds and spotted and smallmouth bass approaching 5 pounds with regularity during the hottest parts of summer, with several of his biggest bass of the year coming in July and August.
Like the rest of his deep fishing, he keeps his spoon selection simple. La Point finds that a white 1/2- or 3/4-ounce spoon produces bass in almost all circumstances. Basically, he lowers the spoon to where he finds fish, hops it, and lets it flutter. Always paying close attention to the fish on his electronics, he keeps the spoon in front of them until they cannot stand it anymore.
“I actually won a tournament two years ago in three minutes with a spoon,” La Point said.
When he finds an active school of fish, every drop of the spoon can produce a strike. In that particular tournament, La Point dropped his spoon, hooked a fish, landed it and then had his partner take care of the fish while he picked up another rod to catch the next one. In three minutes, he had a tournament limit and enough weight to top his closest competitors.
It really can be as simple as it sounds if anglers will break from their bank-beating patterns and explore more open waters. When bass go deep, you do not need to store your gear and wait until fall. You do not need to get out the night-lights for after-dark fishing. There are plenty of bass to be caught during the day if you will just look a little deeper. Take a cooler with cold drinks and get a tan while you tap into those often undisturbed bass that lurk in the depths.
Sonar tuning for deep bass
Most units on the market today offer the same features, but not all depth finders are created equal. Units with large screens and transducers incorporated into a trolling-motor head, such as the Garmin Fishfinder 250 mated to a Minn Kota Universal Sonar trolling motor, are excellent for deep-water fishing. The key to making your depth finder effective is being able to see the fish, the bait, the cover and your lure and knowing the difference between each.
Bait generally appears cloud-like on the screen. Fish will generally be arches or lines moving up and down. Air bubbles will be diagonal lines moving from bottom left to top right in a perfect line. Trees will generally appear as rows of progressively wider lines from top to bottom.
La Point turns fish-ID features off and turns up his sensitivity to be able to see his lures on the screen, but not so much that the screen gets cluttered with interference. He also sets his zoom to look only at the depth he is fishing. So if he knows the bass are 30 feet deep but the water he is in is 100 feet deep, he will set his unit to look only zero to 40 feet deep so he is maximizing his display at all times. The most important thing in deep fishing is to get the full, precise picture.