Woman: Oh, there you go.
Glenn: Right there.
Woman: Yeah, I saw that.
Glenn: I was reeling it in.
Woman: Yeah, I saw that.
Glenn: Oh, goodness.
Woman: Get him in the boat. That's a nice fish. Look... Oh, I thought he threw it. Nicely done. Get him in the boat. Look at that.
Glenn: Oh, and it fell out of his mouth. The General…
Woman: Look at that fish.
Glenn: Holy moly, that's a good fish. Alright. Hey folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com. It's summertime, dog days of summer. We're looking at 100 degrees today. It is really warm and guess what? We're catching quality fish up shallow and I want to talk to you a little about that. We're using Senko-type baits to catch these fish and I want to talk you through how we're doing that, how we're rigging it, what gear we're using, and then I'm going to show you a little bit about how we're actually catching these fish.
Okay, so let me talk to you a little bit about what we're using today. Today we're using Berkley PowerBait MaxScent, The General. It's this puppy right here. And I'm fishing at basically three different ways. One of it is like this. This is just your typical weightless way of fishing a Senko-type bait.
Another way to fish it, which is very effective, is wacky-rigged. There's a lot of different ways people wacky-rig, but for the most part, I just use what I'm fishing. There you go, now I'm wacky-rigged. It's very straightforward, simple, easy to do. I use the equipment that I already have. I'm not a big fan of having one-trick ponies in my tackle box because I know there's a lot of different jigs you can get. There's a lot of different hooks you can get. You can get certain bands that go around here and tools to put the bands on and all this stuff to rig, wacky-rig.
I don't do that, again, because it just clutters up my tackle box because if I'm not fishing it this way, then I just got stuff in my tackle box that I'm not using. So wacky-rig is just weightless, like, this is how I'm fishing The General today. If I want to add a little weight to it, I'll just put a little bullet weight in the front and I'm good to go. Just repurpose stuff that I already have. There you go. Alright.
Woman: Just like that. And I lost my General.
Glenn: Yup. That doesn't help.
Woman: No. Ah, you little sucker. Got you right in the cheek. There we go.
Glenn: The General strikes again.
Woman: He's a little guy, but I'll take him.
Glenn: Yeah.
Woman: Acrobatics.
Glenn: Another rig I'm using to get in those thick bushes and cover where the fish are hiding this time of year is a Texas rig, The General. And here I'm using a quarter-ounce tungsten weight with a bobber-stopper in the front. I've got it rigged with Berkley FireLine Ultra 8 30-pound line as a braid, so this is perfect for fishing in that cover. It's got lots of sensitivity, abrasion resistance, it's really powerful, so I can fish in all that cover and I don't have to worry about my line.
That's what I'm using and also I have that rigged up on a seven-foot, medium heavy power rod, with a fast-action tip. This is your workhorse kind of rod. There's all kinds of manufacturers that make them. Make sure you got a few of them in your boat because you can fish all kinds of lures on them with it and this time we're fishing that Texas rig General.
And on it, I have this reel. This is the Revo SX baitcasting reel. This is an awesome reel, smooth casting. Paired with this FireLine, you can cast really far and it's got over 24 pounds of drag, which I really like because let's face it, a lot of the baitcasters that come out today are somewhere between 12 and 15 pounds of drag. This has 24 pounds. This is perfect for horsing those fish out of deep cover, back in the weeds, back in the bushes, where you're going to find them.
You can get them out paired with this FireLine. This is a great combination that you can use to get all those fish out and now worry about breaking them off or getting them wrapped up and not getting them out. So that's what we're using today. Now that I've shown you what we're doing, how we're rigging it, let me show you how to fish. There you go. Nice. They're in here.
Woman: Come here, you. Glenn's getting the net. Come here baby, come here. Come here. Ooh, come on Glenn. Come on, Glenn. There we go. There we go. He's got a sore on his tongue. Yeah, he does.
Glenn: So the thing about summertime is in the early morning and in the evening hours, the fish are gonna be shallow, they're gonna be roaming around and actively chasing bait fish. So you can catch them on fast-moving baits like Topwater, such as buzz baits and poppers or you can fish them on the spinner baits, crankbaits, and you're gonna catch fish doing that.
But when the sun gets really high and right in the middle of the sky and you've got these shadows, you can see it on my face, well, that's when the fish bury up in the cover. And I know a lot of people think that the fish go out deep, they're going to go from super shallow, now they're going to go 500 yards out, even further to the deeper parts of the lake. The main points, the ledges, the humps, the channels, that sort of thing.
Well yeah, there's a population of bass that are out there that are that deep and you can certainly fish them and catch them, but a lot of those fish that are up shallow in the morning, they don't go far. What they do is they bury themselves up in this cover that's right around nearby. Look around, see what's in your lake. It could be docks. It could be logs. It could be down trees. It could be flooded bushes. It could be hydrilla, milfoil, any kind of weed patches, such as the lily pads.
That's where the fish are gonna go and it's not because they want to get out of the heat or because they want to get out of the sun, but it's because that's where the baitfish go to hide from their predators. And wherever you find that baitfish, that's where the bass are. If the baitfish move, the bass will go with them all the time. And so this time of year you're going to have a lot of those fry that are growing up, trying to get big for the winter and they're going to be...
Just go to a place where there's a lot of weeds. Go look. You'll see all those little fry and little bait fish running around in there, little bluegill and whatnot. Well, if you see that, you can bet the bass are there too. So the key about fishing on bright sunny days like this is looking for the shadows. Not so much the sun, but where are the shadows? Because that's where the bass are gonna set up shop, where they can ambush their prey.
So say you're fishing in a long line of docks, if one side of the docks is sunny and the other side is shady, just fish the shady side. You can be a lot more effective that way and be more productive and get that whole stretch of docks in a lot shorter time and catch a lot more fish because you're not wasting any casts on the sunny side. Same thing when you're looking at weeds, when you're looking at flooded bushes. Pay attention to where that bite is. I bet you it's on the shady side. That's the first cast that I always make is on the shady side.
Now the two ways I'm doing it today is with the weightless General and then also with the Texas-rigged General to get in there. So I like to fish a lot with the weightless because I like to get in and around the outside of that cover before I go in deep. So I'll be fishing that and see if I can't entice them to come out and hit it, say for example beaver huts. We have a lot of those in this lake and those fish will be in there. You can entice quite a few out of them by casting to the outside edges of that hut and then we've you've caught those, go in with the weighted Texas rig.
And I like to use that to get in there and go a little bit deep. Sink it down where they're buried up inside those nooks and crannies of that beaver hut. Same thing with the weeds. Get up there where they're buried in there. You can use that with this weight. I'm not using a heavy, heavy weight. I'm not punching. I'm using an actually pretty light weight because what I like to do is once I get it in that cover, I like to work it real slow, real slow. Just throw it down there, let it hit the bottom, and then crawl it over the top so those limbs or those branches or if I'm in the weeds, crawl up through those weeds.
If I get over a branch, like get that line over the branch, I like to bring it up over that branch and then just shake the bait just a little bit and then let it flutter right back down. So I don't need a real heavy weight to do that, otherwise, it will just drop real fast and it won't match the speed of how I'm fishing the bait.
Key thing during the summertime is when you come up against a little spot where there's some weeds or a little patch of bushes or a string of docks, if you catch a fish off that, stop and fish it again. Make sure you keep making casts to that because if there's one bass there, it's very likely there's quite a few. There's probably a concentration of baitfish there and there's a whole wolf pack in there feeding on them. So I can't tell you how many times I've caught multiple fish out of the same exact spot during the summertime. They just congregate that way.
So don't… I see a lot of guys do this. They'll catch a fish and by time they unhook them and take pictures and all that stuff, they've drifted off the spot and then they just keep on going down the bay. Don't be that guy. Turn around, come back to that spot where you just caught that fish and throw again, see if you can catch some more out of that spot. This is why I have it rigged up a couple of different ways because I can catch them one way and then if it's not working or if I only catch a few off that, then I can flip over to this and flip it another way and catch some more fish. You'd be surprised how that little change of presentation you can pull a lot more fish out of the same exact spot.
Woman: He thinks he's big.
Glenn: Good job.
Woman: He thinks he's big. He's mad.
Glenn: You can get him.
Woman: He's mad.
Glenn: You got him hooked in the roof of the mouth.
Woman: I got him hooked somewhere. Right through the nose, I believe. Now you can do a snapshot because I got the bait.
Glenn: There you go.
Woman: Here you go.
Glenn: Bring it right up to the camera. So anyway, that's how I fish it during the summertime. Just be prepared, summer's all about taking advantage of those opportunities. Be versatile. Pay attention to where those bites are and you'll catch a lot more fish. I hope those tips help. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.
