Okay, here's another question from an angler who says he fishes a lot of lakes in the summertime that have a lot of timber in it, but he's having trouble catching fish around the bases of the trees and out around the timber areas on the bottom during the summertime. So, "Do you have any tips?"
Yeah, actually, this may or may not be happening. But in the summertime, a couple of things could happen. Number one, you might have a thermocline setting up. You can see that on your graph. You'll see a thick line somewhere above the bottom of the lake.
Well, underneath that line, oxygen is really depleted. And that's not a very healthy environment for the bass, so they're not going to stay down there. So they might not just be on the bottom because of that.
In addition, sometimes what happens is if the bottom is void of a lot of, you know, weeds or any kind of cover, the big fish may move up into the branches of the trees to provide a little more protection, and the bass will follow them. So the bass may be higher up in the water column up around those branches.
And finally, if there's a lot of wood debris on the bottom of the lake, what happens when wood starts to decompose, it actually consumes a lot of oxygen. And that same thing I told you that occurred with the thermocline can also happen with wood decomposing on the bottom. It just may not have enough oxygen down there where the bass will want to hang out in, and plus the baitfish won't either. So if you're having difficulty catching fish around the bases of these trees, move up vertically in the water column and vertically jig those areas, and you might catch some suspended fish up off the bottom.
