Deep largemouth bass

[Bailey. K Bassin]

Hey I just had a question that I am curious about. I am from Ontario, and I see all the time on bass masters and flw anglers catching large mouth in Deep water (like 20-30 feet). This is just above me, up here if you catch a largy in 12 that is pretty deep. I just want to see if anyone know why large mouth go so deep in some lakes and not in other?

[GORDO]

Im not an expert but deep is a relative term. Also, I live in washington state where the water temp hardly reaches mid 70s, in the southern states its not uncommon to see 85+ degree water. A lot of times the bass after spawning will head out just to find more comfortable water. A lot of the lakes I fish are less than 30 feet deep but I will still catch LMB 15 feet of water. Also the presence of pelagic bait like shad will make the bass go deep and chase them. 

There are a lot of great articles and books out there if you want to study their movement and why! They are truly fascinating fish!

[diablojoe]

I am just a beginner but I would say it all depends on how deep the lake is. From what I have read it has to do with the Thermocline which is the area between the warm water and the much colder water. This middle layer is the transition layer and usually the bass will stay above this layer because the temperature changes rapidly and also doesn't have much oxygen. So in the summer you might catch bass up shallow in the early morning because the water has cooled overnight but as the temperature rises the bass will retreat to deeper water usually close to their preferred feeding area. I am hoping this is somewhat correct. Any one else?

[visagelaid]

Fishing some of the larger lakes here in the south where the water temperatures are higher (upper 80s), the bass will go down 30 feet to get in the cooler water.  At least this is the way I understand it.

[WRB]

You are in south western the Lake of The Woods area or south eastern? Your lakes are natural, not man made reserviors and have other top end predator fish like walleye, pike, musky and lake trout that occupy most of the deep water prime area. The LMB live near shore or around islands with weed beds and rarely venture off shore to deep reefs in natural lakes.

Keep in mind the northern range limit for LMB is where you are located, they make up a small % of the bass population dominated by Smallmouth bass.

The difference is the prey sources of dermasel verses palegic bait fish. Southern reservoirs are stocked with threadfin and sometimes gizzard shad, northern natural lakes don't have palegic shad populations, they may have alewife, whitefish and perch. Smallmouth will roam a lot more the LMB in northern lakes, where LMB tend to be more aquatic plant oriented preferring dermasel prey.

Tom

[RichF]

I've lived in the Thousand Islands Region of NY (pretty close to Ontario) most of my life and have been bass fishing up there for 20 yrs.  In the summer, it's very common for me to catch largemouth in 12 to 18 ft on several different bodies of water.  I think it's a combination of factors that push the bass out deep: water quality, clarity, oxygen levels, and bait.  I think that on any lake or reservoir, there is going to be a population of bass that stays shallow and one that stays deep most of the year.