Summer 2024
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This move may make the bass feel more protected from angling pressure, or it may relocate them to an area where they can stay in one place and can pick off an easy meal until the weather patterns stabilize.
Sometimes a weather change may push the bass to an open water flat. Other times, a weather change, will move the bass from vegetation to hard cover. Hard cover could be described as laydowns, stumps, riprap, or boat docks.
These forms of hard cover provide a sense of security and comfort to a bass that wants to stay docile until the barometric pressure evens out.
Whether it is a certain lake or river, or maybe it is just a key weedline or backwater lake on a river system, fishing pressure takes its toll on fish and makes it frustrating for the anglers pursuing them.
If you have identified or know that this area holds good fish, the chances of them moving are slim unless there has been a drastic change, such as a change in the water level, or current, or the removal of the fishing holding cover that the bass were positioned on.
COMBATING PRESSURED BASS TO FORCE A STRIKE
Line: Sometimes getting fish to bite after they have been heavily pressured can be done by making one small change, and that change can be done by decreasing your line size. By decreasing your line size, it is less visible in the water, and it imparts a more natural action to your lure because a smaller pound test line has a smaller diameter. Other line changes that can aid in getting pressured fish to bite may be switching from a braid to fluorocarbon line.
An example of this switch would be when you are flipping a jig or Texas-rig with a 20-pound-test line, and you drop your pound-test to say a 17-pound Seaguar TATSU. Thus would allow you to still have the benefits of using a strong, and abrasion resistant line, but ideally you are increasing the opportunity of bites, by going down to that smaller pound test.
Weight: A great approach to targeting bass that are hanging around shallow water cover is to flip a Texas-rig. Well after the bass have seen a Texas-rig over and over from other angles, they have become conditioned to them.
This is when I’ll scale down to the smallest weight that I can get away with. Often this has me going down to a 3/16-
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