resident lake bass river fish nomadic fish

bass fishing depths for summer

®

Summer 2019

DEEP

why SOME bass

go deep in the

summer, and

others don’t

MYTHS

By Sean Ostruszka

Photos Michael Murphy Fishing

W

e often like to associate guidelines to things

because it makes life less complicated.

Fishing is no different. Think about it. It’s much easier to say, “always throw suspending jerkbaits in

the spring,” or “dropshots have to be thrown on spinning

tackle,” or “all fish go deep in the summer.”

Yet, we all know people who have broken these

guidelines and caught fish; that last one, especially. Just look

at some of the more recent FLW Cups. Despite being held in

the dog days of August, it’s been won shallow in 2015 and 2016, and nearly won shallow in 2018. So what gives?

“That old adage that all bass go deep in the summer is one of the biggest farces in the sport,” says Michael Murphy, a tournament angler who also holds a fisheries biology degree from Purdue University.

“Do some go deep? Yeah. But if you ask me, there are actually three categories of bass in most lakes, and not all of them go deep.”

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