Lifelong Shallow Water Angler, Figures Out the Offshore Bite
Author:
JT Kenney
Where I grew up fishing in Maryland, we didn’t know anything about “deep bass.” I didn’t know anything because we actually don’t have any on the two fisheries I grew up on, the Potomac River and Deep Creek Lake. Both of these places are year round shallow fisheries.
I actually used to think bass fishing deep was a hoax, really. Something the pros did to throw the rest of us off the trail. Well have I changed my tune in the last few years, and padded my bank account, with these “deep bass.” That didn’t happen overnight though. I began to notice as the spawn waned and the post spawn / summer started to begin, I started noticing a few boats that always seemed to be out in the middle of the lake and coincidentally those same guys were always at or near the top of the standings at the end of the week.
I never claimed to be the smartest tool in the shed, but it was time I started fishing offshore. When I started offshore there was not near the information available about it and also there was not nearly as many people doing it either. It was a lot of trial and error with one of those biggest things was understanding “lake” current over “river” current and how the fish set up on structure.
In a river where there is current it’s typically pretty swift. In turn the fish tend to set up in eddies out of the current. Where as in a lake there is current but tends to be much less. Therefore it tends to set the fish up on the sides of structure faces the current instead of in the eddies.
Lake current is a gentle current and it’s also a conveyor belt of food for the bass. Also in summer months it’s a much cooler more comfortable place for the predators and the prey. Of all the things I have learned about deep water bass, which is the single best piece of advice I can give and was the thing that took me the longest to learn myself. Once you know where the fish set up, the rest will fall in place. Catching deep-water bass is easy. Finding them is the hard part.
