FINDING WEEDLINE LARGEMOUTH
BASS-  Let’s take a quick look at the procedures you can use and the order to
use them in when searching for Largemouth bass on weed lines. 1.
LOCATION – What areas of the lake will I focus my attention on? 2.
DEPTH
– How deep will the fish be? LOCATION - When beginning a day searching for deep weed line largemouth, I always begin with the same thing, GREEN WEEDS, whether it is coontail cabbage or milfoil, green means oxygen and bait and ultimately BASS. In early season the greenest weeds will be the shallower ones and the weeds that will remain green later in the year are always the deeper ones. The early season weeds get the light penetration and warmer water temps first and the deeper weeds are less susceptible to the nighttime temperature drops that are inherent with Fall, remaining green well into the season’s end. Secondly, look for weed lines that are adjacent to shallow feeding or spawning areas with deep water access near by and this can be the key to finding schools of bass on most days. The shallow areas offer the Largemouth the opportunity during stable weather or on a warm sunny day, to follow the baitfish into the warmer water. The last part or the location is the fish's position... look for the shaded side of the weed line and fish those first for the aggressive bass, once the edges have been fished then it's time to fish right through the middle. These fish are feeding and when they feed, they hide in order to ambush their prey. Pitching your bait to the shaded side of any cover will dramatically improve your odds of catching, even on deep weed lines. DEPTH - You’re probably asking yourself how deep? As a general rule I start at 6 feet and go all the way down to 18 feet, or where ever the weed line stops growing. In some of the clearer lakes, weed lines are present in 18 + feet of water but in more tannic, stained waters they may only get down to 8 to 10 feet and this is where light penetration is the key to the growth of these weedy jungles. Regardless of how deep the weed lines are, the key will always remain GREEN!!! Brown weeds are dead and will eat the oxygen levels up in the water, creating a very unpleasant locale for both the predator and the prey where green weeds will create oxygen, hold freshwater shrimp and attract baitfish to them, in turn attracting the largemouth and just about every other predatory game fish in the lake. By putting these two key ingredients together before you head out on the water you can effectively eliminate a bunch of areas and drastically narrow your search. One thing to always keep in mind is that in most waters, 90 percent of the fish live in 10 percent of the water and the trick to finding the 10 percent is to have all the right variables present. Tight Lines and Long Weekends JP DeRose
Get North!
Fishing
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