Summertime is a great time to be bass fishing as the weather is comfortable outside and you can break out the shorts and flip-flops. Plus, the bass are generally in a feeding mood and no longer worried about spawning and they can be found throughout the water column. If you like to fish shallow, you can find fish and if you'd rather head out deep, there will be bass for you, too.
Bassmaster Elite Series pro Brandon Card likes fishing during the summer months because it gives him options. If he's planning to stick shallow, either because of the lake type or because he's targeting bass feeding on spawning bluegill, there are several ways to catch fish. He breaks down the shallow bite into categories, including topwater, shallow, and fish suspended below the surface in deeper water.
Targeting Bluegill Beds
After the bass spawn and the weather heats up, one of the most consistent shallow bites can be around bluegill beds.
"The whole key is to find the spawning bluegill; you either put the trolling motor on high and start to look for them or use your side scan on your graphs to scan for deeper ones," said Card. "My Humminbird 360 is another great tool for finding them in slightly deeper water. I'll try to find as many as possible and visit them multiple times a day as fish come and go and more will come up to feed on them throughout the day."
There are a handful of different ways to target bass eating spawning bluegill, but Card's favorite and most productive is with topwater lures like the Yo-Zuri 3DB Popper and 3DB Prop in bluegill patterns.
"I use the popper if there's a little chop or over a little deeper water and the prop bait when it's calmer out or in very shallow water," he said. "The whole key with fishing this way is to be stealthy and make long casts and both of those baits are small, but they cast very well. I try to stay way off the beds and make as long of a cast as I can to where I know the beds are."
Card fishes both topwaters with an 8.1:1 reel spooled with 30-pound Yo-Zuri SuperBraid with a short leader of 20-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon. His rod of choice is a signature series iRod Wild Card Quercus 7-foot medium topwater/jerkbait rod.
Targeting Suspended Bass in Shade
During the warmer months, bass tend to suspend in the water column. This has always been a tricky proposition to target them effectively, but with forward-facing sonar, it's much easier. Card uses to scan for suspended fish and one of the most likely areas is around bridges.
"I catch a lot of fish suspended in the shade around bridge columns with a Yo-Zuri 3DB Series Jerkbait SP 110," he said. "You'll see the fish suspending 5 feet down and it could be 10 or even 30 feet of water. I like to rip it through these fish and it's easy to see them on my Humminbird MEGA Live, and I can adjust the cadence to get them to react. Generally, the warmer the weather, the faster and more erratic I will fish a jerkbait and that bait has a very aggressive action, making it so good in warmer water."
Card fishes the jerkbait on the same rod and reel he uses for his topwaters and goes with a 10 to 12-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon line. For slightly stained water, prism sexy shad is his go-to color and he'll use prism shad when the water is clearer.
Covering Ground
When searching for shallow summer bass, it's hard to beat a fast-moving bait. One of Card's favorites in warmer months, and other seasons, is a square bill crankbait. His pick is the Yo-Zuri 3DB Series Squarebill Crankbait 1.5 in citrus shad in stained water and prism shad in clear water.
"It's a key player for me in shallow water, especially around riprap, isolated stumps, bridges, laydowns, and anything influenced by current," he shared. "It's a great size, casts well, and deflects perfectly off of anything I bang it into."
Another thing Card will look for is the presence of baitfish; this is one of the times a crankbait excels. "They are congregated in the morning a lot of times, and I'll look for creeks with cooler water; maybe there's a spring in the back or fresh flow coming in," he said. "Certain areas of the lake will be cooler and these are generally always the best places during the summer months."
Card will fist the squarebill on the same rod he does for his topwaters and jerkbaits but opts for a 6.3:1 reel spooled with 14-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon.
Fishing during summer is fun because so many techniques will catch fish. When the fish are shallow or suspended, Brandon Card says it's hard to beat a topwater, square bill crankbait, or a jerkbait.
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