How can I catch largemouth bass that are in an overfished, heavy pressure lake?
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I fish at a lake that is so over fished, you barely get any bites. I need some ideas of things I can do with non-working baits, to make the bass want to fight for it. Another words, how can I change-up my baits to make them work. Example, take a worm and tie a knot in it and fish texas rigged. I don’t think this would work, just an idea of want I;m looking for. Serious answers only please! And I only use artificial bait, no real worms, or minnies.
I like this lake because it’s within 15 min of my house. If I had another lake closer I’d go there.
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well if the lake is overfished maybe you should try another lake for awhile. let that lake cool down
Patience my friend Patience… Change the presentation of the bait, and use different baits, and always fish the points where land meets water or an incoming stream comes into the fishing lake…
If it’s possible fish mid-week. Usually the weekends are the big pressure times fish can stay spooked for a couple of days after that. By Wednesday or Thursday things might have calmed down a bit.
Also try using as light of leaders as you dare. Try to be quiet when you are out there, don’t just throw your anchor over the side, use an electric trolling motor or oars when you’re in close to the area you want to fish. If you have an aluminum boat try putting carpet down in the bottom of the boat to reduce the sound of you and your equipment banging around.
As far as lures go, the most luck I’ve had are with ones that you fish slow and sometimes just let sit there. Jig-and-Pigs, or stickbaits rigged “wacky style” (hooked right through the middle of the lure so both ends are wiggling off to the sides) can work well if you cast them out and be p-a-t-i-e-n-t with them.
Good luck and tight lines.
Megabass 110 are a nice lure, kinda expencieve, You can find them on eBay They work well.
i went fishing this morning on a very overfished lake as well. Try cray-fish colored shad-raps. I caught about 10 nicely sized bass on them. Good luck!
Fish slow and quiet. Dont go roaring into the cove your are going to fish and then put down the elctric motor. Sneak in. Fish big ugly rubber baits or jigs real slow across the bottom. Let them settle and give them a tiny twitch. Do this once or twice and then give them a bigger twitch so they jump, then let it settle again for a few seconds. Sometimes you have to repeat this several times before a fish will take it. When a body of water is overfished the ones that are left are really wary. Also be bite sensitive, because the pickup will typically be very light.
Slow down.
Another one of my tricks is this – you say that you use senko worms. Get the ones w/ about the last inch and a half flat. Cut small circles in the flat part in the middle in a line from the base of the flat part to the tip. Once you’ve done that, (you should be able to get about 3 holes), cut down the middle from the tip to the base. Then you’ve cut the flat part down the middle from the tip to the base and each side will have 3 half circles in it. This causes a different style of vibration while you’re reeling and I’d also be willing to bet that no one else on your lake is doing that.
There’s all sorts of things you can experiment with. Try wrapping bubble gum around different parts of the worm. Take a razor blade and bisect the worm from about a half inch past where the hook goes in all the way to the end. if that doesn’t work, rotate it 90 degrees and bisect those two halves where you have 4 pieces of worm.
I’ve heard of people who will put cheerios on the hook between the eye and where it’s buried in the worm. (the exposed part of the hook will have like 5 cheerios on it).
Use a lizard and when you put the hook through the nose, run it down in there about an extra inch. Then the soft plastic nose will actually be about 3/4 of an inch on the line. Make sure you’ve rigged it to float and you can cast it into some lilly pads and every now and then, lift up on the line and it’ll look like the lizard is picking its head up to look around.
These are just some ideas right off hand. The best thing to do is to get creative. That’s another bonus of soft plastics. They’re inexpensive. You can literally destroy one trying to figure out new ways and you’re only out 25 cents. Get a holepuncher and a razor blade and go to town!
I believe that the best way to catch over pressured bass is to slow down and try down sizing use smaller baits like 4″ worms 1/4 oz jig and pig. This time of the year in the north I don’t think it is really the pressure it is probably that the fish have spawned, the bigger fish moved out and you may still find some bucks on the beds more than likely they are just roaming the fishing has been slow lately I just went to two different lakes this weekend and the first one I went to you can normally catch 50 to 100 bass in a few hours if you try, in 5 hours I caught 13 bass the ten better ones came out of 16′ to 18′ of water and you had to let your lure sit there and twitch it ocassionally and then let it sit there again I got away with using a 5″ senko, my friends two children each caught one fish after I got them to leave their lines in the water. This lake the fish will usually take any color just certin colors work for bigger fish normally and we didn’t get any hogs just a few decent fish. The majority came on black and blue flake ( 021 ) senko. The other lake we caught fish on 1/4 oz jigs with twin tail trailers and also on tubes 5 fish in 4 hours. The biggest two on tubes about 4 lbs. 3 1/2″ green pumkin one in 14′ of water and the other on a dock in deep water. I has been slow for a few weeks and should pick up shortly have patience and good luck fishing.