I have noticed that the fishing is slow and we do not get many posts about good winter catches, if you are anything like me that fish for my pleasure you would rather avoid the cold than bare it for a day. I have decided to start discussions around the various structure type that bass anglers focus on and my PERSONAL opinions on how to fish them. This first post is about grass beds.
Anyone who pursues bass is a structure fisherman, whether he realizes it or not![/b]
Aquatic grass serves as a fish magnet, whether it grows shallow or deep…….[/b]
Location, Location, Location. Those three words are the foundations for success in bass fishing. You can choose the perfect lure and present it in an irresistible way – but if you are not putting it in front of a bass, your efforts are wasted and you are merely casting.
Many expert anglers agree that the fun in fishing isn’t just battling a bass but in finding where they live and how to make them strike.
The vegetation is like a doormat laid across the water’s surface. Its filamentous vines intermesh to form a web that’s almost impenetrable by fishing lures, but it’s a magnet to fish. In fact, this particular dam is alive with bait fish. Boy can you imagine the terror that exist down there! The only safety the bait fish have is in numbers. A few unlucky ones will be eaten and there is nothing they can do! But since there is so many of them majority will survive.
I repeatedly cast and retrieve my buzz bait over the greenery. My boat is positioned parallel to the wall-like edge of the grass bed. I use my electric motor to move slowly along the grass bed and pull my lure across small holes in the mat hoping a decent fish might be hiding and waiting for bait fish to swim by.
Suddenly there’s an aquatic explosion, the bassing equivalent of a TNT blockbuster. My buzz bait disappear in a roil of noise and spray, but when I yank back, the bait come sailing through the air missing my head by inches. The first reaction from me is to bring my lure in as quick as possible picked up another, had a weightless fluke tied on, and took another swipe at the hole where the explosion happened. Subsequent casts with both buzz bait and fluke go unmolested. What goes through my head? Man I cocked up a big fish! But I know I will come back later in the day and work this area slower with plastics and chances are good I will catch that fish.
Grass beds are winners wherever they found. Grass has all the elements that appeal to bass. It attracts bait fish, it offers concealment, and it provides shade, cooler water temperature and higher oxygen content. Bass are routinely drawn to grass both to catch bait fish and to spend inactive periods between meals. But to consistently catch bass from grass beds requires more than a layman’s knowledge of location and method.
Effective grass bed fishing is a specialized art. Anglers must approach this structure with the smarts to decipher specifically where the fish should be and how to get them to bite.
What are Grass Beds? [/b]
The terms “grass†and “grass beds†are commonly misapplied in bass fishing. Anglers who talk about fishing “grass†are actually referring to any of several dozen species of water weeds that grow throughout South Africa. Most of these weeds are rooted in the dam bottom and grow towards the surface.
These bottom-rooted, grass type weeds undergo similar growth cycles. They live as deep as 25 feet, depending on water clarity and how far sunlight penetrates. As the water warms in spring, these weeds begin growing taller and thicker. Through summer and fall, several species actually reach the surface and form dense, intermeshed mats of cover. Then, during winter they die back. The amount of dieback depends on how cold the water gets and how much sunlight the plant receive.
Fishing shallow and midlevel grass beds.[/b]
Since I have spent most of my live fishing dams in Gauteng, most of my grass bed experience involves water depths from 12 feet up to the surface. Through fishing competitively across the country I have found that basic grass bed patterns that work in Gauteng also works elsewhere. [/b]
I base my fishing approach on aquatic grasses four seasonal-based growth stages. The “ADOLESCENT STAGE†occurs in early spring, when the grass starts growing up from the bottom in strands. Sometimes these new growth areas are thin and you got open water over them.
The second stage is the “CROWN STAGE†this occurs in early summer when the strands reach the surface and start spreading. They begin mushrooming, turning the surface into sort of a checkerboard pattern of vegetation and open water.
The third stage is the “MATTED STAGEâ€, and it usually occurs from midsummer into fall. This is when all the little patches of grass start growing together to form large mats.
The fourth stage is the “DEATH STAGE†of late fall and winter, when the mats starts turning brown and dying off.
NOTE NOT ALL GRASSES FOLLOW THESE COMPLETE GROWTH CYCLES.
I use different methods to fish these four stages. In the adolescent stage, bass are in the shallows to spawn. If I know of a good spawning area, I’ll go there and start looking for grass beds closest to the deep water. In some dams I can see this grass under the surface. In other dams I’ll locate it on my depth finder. I’ll concentrate on fishing the shallow side of this grass, where it tapers out into the spawning area. I always see if there’s an open gut between the shallow side of the grass and such spawning cover as reeds or brush. A lot of times the bass will gang up in these areas before moving onto the beds, and then they will move into them again when they finish spawning. When fishing adolescent grass I will cover water quickly while searching for fish. I will cast lipless crank bait rapid-fire through the edges of the emerging grass beds or voids adjacent to grass. I will work these baits in different depths and relative to the day’s weather and water temperature. I try to figure out which zones the bass will be comfortable in, whether they’ll be up or down in the water column, whether they’ll be on the edges of the grass or right in it. Then I concentrate my efforts in these areas. When I get a bite, I’ll slow down and fish that area with plastics. Or if I cast lipless crank bait for a long time without getting hit, I’ll switch to a jerk bait and start working a lot slower.
As the spawn winds down and bass begin migrating back to late-spring haunts, I will change over to my “Crown Stage†pattern, which involves slightly deeper, thicker grass beds with some clump beginning to show on the surface. When the fish leave the spawning area I just move with them. Now I am fishing farther out in the dam, closer to deep water. I pay special attention to opening adjacent to or between surface clumps. I’ll pitch plastics into the holes and or work top waters through them. By now the grass is too thick to use a lipless crank baits, unless you fishing the contours out along the edges of the grass. When using top water lures I select my lure according to prevailing conditions. On windy day’s or when the fish is real active I’ll use a buzz bait that makes a lot of noise, but if the wind’s down I’ll throw something more subtle, like a zarra spook or a horny toad.
By mid to late summer, the grass beds start joining and matting on the surface and I switch to my third pattern. Now I am dealing with some heavy mats and even deeper water. I may flip the edges or little pockets with plastics or jigs. I might fish the contours along the outside edges with top waters or jerk baits. Or if the bass are hanging back in the thick stuff, I’ll work the mats with top water plastic or rubber frogs. One other standard applies when fishing matted vegetation in warm weather. Moving water can be key, say there’s current moving in a river channel, and grass grows out to these channels. Bass like to congregate along the edges of grass beds that face the current, like on points or bends. The current washes bait fish into these areas, and they’re easy prey. Good baits for these areas are buzz baits, crank baits and flukes.
It’s late fall by the time the grass beds progress into my fourth, “Death Stage†of growth, and most bait and bass have moved back into shallow flats or coves. I use a lot of the same techniques I did in the “Matted Stageâ€. I’ll fish around the edges of the mats with spinner baits, buzz bait or plastics. I try to use plain old fishing sense here. If the bass want a slow presentation or an underwater presentation, that’s what I’ll give them. I experiment with a lot of baits and speeds to see what they’re in the mood for. During this stage, bass gravitate toward remaining green growth and away from brown, dying grass. I concentrate my efforts in areas where the grass is still holding on.
How to fish deep grass beds.[/b]
A lot of people don’t like to fish grass, because they have to work harder and concentrate more than when fishing other types of structure. With grass you can’t be sloppy about what you are doing. You’ve got to make sure you’re keeping your bait in the right place. Bass basically relate to grass bed contours like they do to creek channels or sloping shorelines. They hold on predictable places on the structure. Also, some days they stay down deep and tight to the cover, other days they roam out away from it. So analyze the conditions on the day you’re fishing, whether you think the bass are active or not. Then you just apply regular structure fishing techniques to the grass. You’ll learn a few little refinements as you go, and pretty soon you’ll be catching grass bed fish with regularity.
Now let’s say there is an 8-foot flat bordered by a 20-foot channel, the grass maybe solid over the flat, all the way to the surface, and there’s a well defined grass line that parallels the channel. But what you can’t see is that the grass doesn’t grow like a vertical wall under the grass line. It usually tapers off underwater toward the channel drop, and there will be little submerged points or trailing edges that stick out by themselves. These are the places where bass are most likely to be. When you’re looking for them, you might be only a few meters from the visible grass line, but you’ll be over 8 foot of water and grass that growing up only 2 – 4 foot of the bottom. I find these places by fishing parallel to the surface grass line, and constantly monitor my depth finder. I’ll move real slow and hunt for these places. As I ease along I will pitch a plastic worm, fluke or jig a few meters ahead of my boat. I don’t make long casts, and pull my bait back in more horizontal plane. I make short casts and the strip line off my reel so the bait falls straight down. One of the secrets to fishing deep grass beds is to use a vertical presentation. You want your worm to hop up and down in the grass, not skim across the top of it. One of the most common mistakes anglers make with this technique is using a lure that is to light. You’ve actually got to penetrate the cover. This is why I use 3/8 or ½ ounce worm weight or jig in this situation. Bass will shift up and down the grass line contour on a daily basis. I discover their preferred depth on any given day by simple experimentation. When I don’t know their depth, I will position my boat halfway between the mat and where the grass stops growing. I will then make casts in an arc across the front of my boat, sooner or later I’ll find how far down the bass are holding. When the water level of the dam starts dropping in winter bass move to the very ends of the deepest, sharpest dropping grass beds they can find. One other tip for anglers working deep grass beds adjacent to visible mats. You know how, when you’re fishing a bank, you can see gullies or points that run out into the water? Well, whenever you see an indentation or a point or some irregular feature in a grass bed, there’s a structure change under water that’s causing that irregularity. Check it out with your depth finder. A lot of times the bass really collect on these little places!
Well that is it for grass beds! If there is any other type of structure you guys would like me to discuss then feel free to ask. Tome and work permitting I will do my best to share my knowledge and experience. I thought grass would be best for the first one as majority of the Gauties fish grass a lot!
Hope you enjoyed and all comments welcome! [/b]
[/b]
Anyone who pursues bass is a structure fisherman, whether he realizes it or not![/b]
Aquatic grass serves as a fish magnet, whether it grows shallow or deep…….[/b]
Location, Location, Location. Those three words are the foundations for success in bass fishing. You can choose the perfect lure and present it in an irresistible way – but if you are not putting it in front of a bass, your efforts are wasted and you are merely casting.
Many expert anglers agree that the fun in fishing isn’t just battling a bass but in finding where they live and how to make them strike.
The vegetation is like a doormat laid across the water’s surface. Its filamentous vines intermesh to form a web that’s almost impenetrable by fishing lures, but it’s a magnet to fish. In fact, this particular dam is alive with bait fish. Boy can you imagine the terror that exist down there! The only safety the bait fish have is in numbers. A few unlucky ones will be eaten and there is nothing they can do! But since there is so many of them majority will survive.
I repeatedly cast and retrieve my buzz bait over the greenery. My boat is positioned parallel to the wall-like edge of the grass bed. I use my electric motor to move slowly along the grass bed and pull my lure across small holes in the mat hoping a decent fish might be hiding and waiting for bait fish to swim by.
Suddenly there’s an aquatic explosion, the bassing equivalent of a TNT blockbuster. My buzz bait disappear in a roil of noise and spray, but when I yank back, the bait come sailing through the air missing my head by inches. The first reaction from me is to bring my lure in as quick as possible picked up another, had a weightless fluke tied on, and took another swipe at the hole where the explosion happened. Subsequent casts with both buzz bait and fluke go unmolested. What goes through my head? Man I cocked up a big fish! But I know I will come back later in the day and work this area slower with plastics and chances are good I will catch that fish.
Grass beds are winners wherever they found. Grass has all the elements that appeal to bass. It attracts bait fish, it offers concealment, and it provides shade, cooler water temperature and higher oxygen content. Bass are routinely drawn to grass both to catch bait fish and to spend inactive periods between meals. But to consistently catch bass from grass beds requires more than a layman’s knowledge of location and method.
Effective grass bed fishing is a specialized art. Anglers must approach this structure with the smarts to decipher specifically where the fish should be and how to get them to bite.
What are Grass Beds? [/b]
The terms “grass†and “grass beds†are commonly misapplied in bass fishing. Anglers who talk about fishing “grass†are actually referring to any of several dozen species of water weeds that grow throughout South Africa. Most of these weeds are rooted in the dam bottom and grow towards the surface.
These bottom-rooted, grass type weeds undergo similar growth cycles. They live as deep as 25 feet, depending on water clarity and how far sunlight penetrates. As the water warms in spring, these weeds begin growing taller and thicker. Through summer and fall, several species actually reach the surface and form dense, intermeshed mats of cover. Then, during winter they die back. The amount of dieback depends on how cold the water gets and how much sunlight the plant receive.
Fishing shallow and midlevel grass beds.[/b]
Since I have spent most of my live fishing dams in Gauteng, most of my grass bed experience involves water depths from 12 feet up to the surface. Through fishing competitively across the country I have found that basic grass bed patterns that work in Gauteng also works elsewhere. [/b]
I base my fishing approach on aquatic grasses four seasonal-based growth stages. The “ADOLESCENT STAGE†occurs in early spring, when the grass starts growing up from the bottom in strands. Sometimes these new growth areas are thin and you got open water over them.
The second stage is the “CROWN STAGE†this occurs in early summer when the strands reach the surface and start spreading. They begin mushrooming, turning the surface into sort of a checkerboard pattern of vegetation and open water.
The third stage is the “MATTED STAGEâ€, and it usually occurs from midsummer into fall. This is when all the little patches of grass start growing together to form large mats.
The fourth stage is the “DEATH STAGE†of late fall and winter, when the mats starts turning brown and dying off.
NOTE NOT ALL GRASSES FOLLOW THESE COMPLETE GROWTH CYCLES.
I use different methods to fish these four stages. In the adolescent stage, bass are in the shallows to spawn. If I know of a good spawning area, I’ll go there and start looking for grass beds closest to the deep water. In some dams I can see this grass under the surface. In other dams I’ll locate it on my depth finder. I’ll concentrate on fishing the shallow side of this grass, where it tapers out into the spawning area. I always see if there’s an open gut between the shallow side of the grass and such spawning cover as reeds or brush. A lot of times the bass will gang up in these areas before moving onto the beds, and then they will move into them again when they finish spawning. When fishing adolescent grass I will cover water quickly while searching for fish. I will cast lipless crank bait rapid-fire through the edges of the emerging grass beds or voids adjacent to grass. I will work these baits in different depths and relative to the day’s weather and water temperature. I try to figure out which zones the bass will be comfortable in, whether they’ll be up or down in the water column, whether they’ll be on the edges of the grass or right in it. Then I concentrate my efforts in these areas. When I get a bite, I’ll slow down and fish that area with plastics. Or if I cast lipless crank bait for a long time without getting hit, I’ll switch to a jerk bait and start working a lot slower.
As the spawn winds down and bass begin migrating back to late-spring haunts, I will change over to my “Crown Stage†pattern, which involves slightly deeper, thicker grass beds with some clump beginning to show on the surface. When the fish leave the spawning area I just move with them. Now I am fishing farther out in the dam, closer to deep water. I pay special attention to opening adjacent to or between surface clumps. I’ll pitch plastics into the holes and or work top waters through them. By now the grass is too thick to use a lipless crank baits, unless you fishing the contours out along the edges of the grass. When using top water lures I select my lure according to prevailing conditions. On windy day’s or when the fish is real active I’ll use a buzz bait that makes a lot of noise, but if the wind’s down I’ll throw something more subtle, like a zarra spook or a horny toad.
By mid to late summer, the grass beds start joining and matting on the surface and I switch to my third pattern. Now I am dealing with some heavy mats and even deeper water. I may flip the edges or little pockets with plastics or jigs. I might fish the contours along the outside edges with top waters or jerk baits. Or if the bass are hanging back in the thick stuff, I’ll work the mats with top water plastic or rubber frogs. One other standard applies when fishing matted vegetation in warm weather. Moving water can be key, say there’s current moving in a river channel, and grass grows out to these channels. Bass like to congregate along the edges of grass beds that face the current, like on points or bends. The current washes bait fish into these areas, and they’re easy prey. Good baits for these areas are buzz baits, crank baits and flukes.
It’s late fall by the time the grass beds progress into my fourth, “Death Stage†of growth, and most bait and bass have moved back into shallow flats or coves. I use a lot of the same techniques I did in the “Matted Stageâ€. I’ll fish around the edges of the mats with spinner baits, buzz bait or plastics. I try to use plain old fishing sense here. If the bass want a slow presentation or an underwater presentation, that’s what I’ll give them. I experiment with a lot of baits and speeds to see what they’re in the mood for. During this stage, bass gravitate toward remaining green growth and away from brown, dying grass. I concentrate my efforts in areas where the grass is still holding on.
How to fish deep grass beds.[/b]
A lot of people don’t like to fish grass, because they have to work harder and concentrate more than when fishing other types of structure. With grass you can’t be sloppy about what you are doing. You’ve got to make sure you’re keeping your bait in the right place. Bass basically relate to grass bed contours like they do to creek channels or sloping shorelines. They hold on predictable places on the structure. Also, some days they stay down deep and tight to the cover, other days they roam out away from it. So analyze the conditions on the day you’re fishing, whether you think the bass are active or not. Then you just apply regular structure fishing techniques to the grass. You’ll learn a few little refinements as you go, and pretty soon you’ll be catching grass bed fish with regularity.
Now let’s say there is an 8-foot flat bordered by a 20-foot channel, the grass maybe solid over the flat, all the way to the surface, and there’s a well defined grass line that parallels the channel. But what you can’t see is that the grass doesn’t grow like a vertical wall under the grass line. It usually tapers off underwater toward the channel drop, and there will be little submerged points or trailing edges that stick out by themselves. These are the places where bass are most likely to be. When you’re looking for them, you might be only a few meters from the visible grass line, but you’ll be over 8 foot of water and grass that growing up only 2 – 4 foot of the bottom. I find these places by fishing parallel to the surface grass line, and constantly monitor my depth finder. I’ll move real slow and hunt for these places. As I ease along I will pitch a plastic worm, fluke or jig a few meters ahead of my boat. I don’t make long casts, and pull my bait back in more horizontal plane. I make short casts and the strip line off my reel so the bait falls straight down. One of the secrets to fishing deep grass beds is to use a vertical presentation. You want your worm to hop up and down in the grass, not skim across the top of it. One of the most common mistakes anglers make with this technique is using a lure that is to light. You’ve actually got to penetrate the cover. This is why I use 3/8 or ½ ounce worm weight or jig in this situation. Bass will shift up and down the grass line contour on a daily basis. I discover their preferred depth on any given day by simple experimentation. When I don’t know their depth, I will position my boat halfway between the mat and where the grass stops growing. I will then make casts in an arc across the front of my boat, sooner or later I’ll find how far down the bass are holding. When the water level of the dam starts dropping in winter bass move to the very ends of the deepest, sharpest dropping grass beds they can find. One other tip for anglers working deep grass beds adjacent to visible mats. You know how, when you’re fishing a bank, you can see gullies or points that run out into the water? Well, whenever you see an indentation or a point or some irregular feature in a grass bed, there’s a structure change under water that’s causing that irregularity. Check it out with your depth finder. A lot of times the bass really collect on these little places!
Well that is it for grass beds! If there is any other type of structure you guys would like me to discuss then feel free to ask. Tome and work permitting I will do my best to share my knowledge and experience. I thought grass would be best for the first one as majority of the Gauties fish grass a lot!
Hope you enjoyed and all comments welcome! [/b]
[/b]
