On Jun 10, 9:47 pm, Muskoka Fisherman
wrote:
I was out fishing today catching 2.5 -3.5 lb bass all day long. Do
larger fish hang out in the same areas as the smaller fish? or should
I be going somewhere else to fish for the big ones?

Bass tend to hang together according to age and stick close to where
they hatched. They roam but tend to prefer their old neighborhood. The
older they get the more familiar they are with surroundings, and the
more they become familiar with the majority of basic bass angling and
popular lures. Little bass get eaten by larger bass, hence the
popularity of bass pattern lures.

The age group you were into are the upper end of the group willing to
chase schools of shad or other baitfish. Ads they get older they break
from such spending of vital fat, beginning to conserve calories,
preparing for winter more efficiently. They become more opportunistic,
doing more ambushing of larger fish like bream, crappie, larger trout.
When smaller bass are fairly shallow, look for the lunkers deeper.
They seek more security from larger predators like us. That puts them
out of sight most of the year until the spawn at a time most anglers
get their one shot at them in their most vulnerable condition. In
summer you will fins more quality bass in 15 foot water and deeper,
but never deeper than a thermocline. Favorite places are near their
winter haunts, around complicated bottom structure, deep stumps,
intersections of drainages like a creek and a ditch draining a flat
with steep outside slopes. Mid lake humps and ridges near deep water
are good where the hump pokes above the thermocline. Relatively few
anglers try those places, so the bass there are not as pressured as
shallow bass 15' deep.

Lots of big bass have been caught before and learn to avoid artificial
lures. Make sure you fish them convincingly and slowly and try bumping
every rock, stump, ditch slope, bend of a creek, brush pile, sunken
boat, etc. Bottom crawling & bouncing lures are excellent choices. Big
bass love finding large crayfish so imitate those. The larger jigs
with fat trailers best imitate crayfish, but so do craw patterned long
billed crankbaits even in shallower water than it seems proper to use
them. A deep diver that can reach 20 feet works wonders in 10 feet
because it digs bottom and clamors over and through rocks. Try to
match the colors and largest sizes of crayfish in your fishery. It's a
slow technique inching a craw bait along bottom and only occasionally
leaping it up a few feet. Dragging through mud to put up a mud trail
works.

Spoons work well. Bass don't see many of those. Heavy 1.5 oz
spinnerbaits are good fished down the center of a creek in deep water.
Use one with large Colorado blade, and go with black body/skirt/
trailer/blade colors. Verify the presence of fish with sonar before
investing much time over a spot. if you see a school of baitfish or
panfish over structure or around cover like submerged trees there's
likely bass nearby. Whatever you hear are top favorite baits are
probably spooking big bass by the time you get that news. Think out of
the box and choose something that will get down to large bass that
hand below smaller bass, holding a depth when retrieved. You don't
want a lure that comes up when retrieved until it's at the boat. Bring
a spinnerbait up slowly, pausing it several times, and dangle it next
to the boat before casting it. Big bass will often follow something
like that and hit it at the last possible chance.

Jim