Dead slick nights, what's your approach?

[1984isNOW]

Will they still hit top water?

 

Big worm?

 

Don't bother fishing and bank the night out from the wife?

[WRB]

Top water bite is usually better at dusk before darkness. It take bass about an hour to adjust to darkness, after that it’s usually a jig or worm bite for me.

Tom

[scaleface]

Worm , top water  , and spinnerbait works well at night. I also have had good luck with cranks but a lot of people  are leery of treble hooked lures in the dark.

[casts_by_fly]

It’s a buzz bait for me. If there’s no weeds then maybe a whopper plopper also. Throw it at every shallow piece of cover around.  Eventually they will be hitting it and/or you’ll trigger a fish with it. 

[papajoe222]

Once it's actually dark, I only throw one topwater. my other two rods have a worm and a jig tied on.  That topwater is usually a Jitterbug, or an Arbogast Buzz Plug.  The worm is always a ribbon tail with a sliding sinker and the jig is a football with rattles and a RageCraw.

[Catt]

Boogerman Buzzbait white skirt/gold blade

 

Lake Fork Worm 8" black magic 

 

Hack Attack Fluorocarbon Jig black-n-blue, 1/2 oz, Rage Craw blue sapphire 

 

Full Moon on the horizon ?

[WRB]

Blue moon on the horizon?

Tom

[Pat Brown]

They're back on bed here in NC tonight.  Biting the buzzbait, hollow frog and jig real good tonight.  I'm sure they would have hit a worm but never got to throwing it.

 

Caught two on the jig but even though I didn't connect on the buzzbait or frog with any of the fish that hit it, the topwaters told me right where to put my jig to catch a couple.

 

Some nights they choke topwater and won't touch a jig.  Some nights they want to eat off the bottom and won't touch on top.  Some nights they'll start out eating on top and pause for an hour and then resume on the bottom etc.

 

You just gotta rotate baits and areas til you figure out what they want.  They'll let you know.

 

Main reason I find it's good to rotate areas is you'll catch one off an area and if you let it cool off for a second you can come back 10 minutes later and catch another but sometimes you can make fish tight lipped if you over work them and they get wise.

[thediscochef]

I've done my best night work with a black chatterbait, Texas rigged z craw, and red eye shads. The red eye shad is responsible for most of my 5#+ night fish but the z craw and the chatterbait have a 7 and a 6-13 to their credit

[1984isNOW]

Interesting takes on a dead slick night, do you feel it's tougher to fish like it is during dead slick days?

 

Essentially I'm just at bad water right now, not a large number of largies, but they're big when you findem. Not a lot of cover, very clean water, barely any weeds except away from shore line and sparse.

 

I caught one last night on a spinner off a dock, I shoulda just slept. That's the only cover here pretty much, docks. Couple spots with boulders that I think the smallies hang at, and a few spits with a tree or two in the water, too far to yak to.

 

 

[Catt]

55 minutes ago, Kites R4 Skyfishing said:

That's the only cover here pretty much, docks

 

Any of those have lights?

 

Any have sunken brush for Crappie fishing?

[LrgmouthShad]

Just now, Catt said:

 

Any of those have lights?

 

Any have sunken brush for Crappie fishing?

Catt asking the right questions

 

Also been a while since I’ve fished docks but I wouldn’t mind if docks were the only cover I had. I love em

[1984isNOW]

6 hours ago, Catt said:

 

Any of those have lights?

 

Any have sunken brush for Crappie fishing?

Nope, bare with no structure or abutting cover. Mostly flat slow incline dead leaves maybe a rock or two, it's a lake that people fish for lake trout and landlocked salmon, I heard there's an overpopulation of white perch.

 

 

[WRB]

What is the current water temp?

What type of bass....Smallmouth, Spotted or LMB.

If bass live in this lake there will be crawdads and jigs will work. 

Tom

[1984isNOW]

@WRB I'm still learning how to fish a jig, feel like I'm pulled in a hundred different directions with everyone's advice.

 

Definitely smallies, and then these...

 

Looks like largie to me.

 

May be spots here, but the last gov survey was decades ago and doesn't mention either LM or spots.

 

I'd love to find smallies here, but it's 1000+acres and I'm on a yak with no electronics.

 

There's a couple spots with boulders

 

Some stretches of docks

 

Relatively clean bottom except for a small corner that gets shallow and slightly grassy

 

 

[Bankbeater]

After it has been dark for a while I fish on top with a Jitterbug, and on the bottom with a jig and Texas rig.  Jitterbug is always black, and I start off the bottom baits with black and go from there.

[WRB]

The bass in the photo is a Largemouth.

If the bass in your lake are primarily Smallmouth then I would down size the lures. For example a very effective Smallmouth jig is a Yamamoto 4” #221 Hula Grub on 3/8 oz plain black football head jig. You cast cast this jig the same technique you fish a Texas rig w/bullet weight.

Top water lures same you use during the day, same Hula grub jig and worms. Night Worms consider 8” Max Scent King Tail Power worm in Black w/ blue flake and 5” Zipper curl tail Roboworm in Midnight.

Texas rig the worms using 8mm Glass faceded bead, 3/16 oz bullet weight and Owner 4107 size 3/0 Cover Shot hook. This is known as Brass n Glass, but any hard metal weight works. 

What tackle do you use?

Tom

[1984isNOW]

The bass in the lake are primarily competing with an over population of white perch. Not great numbers of bass it seems, but healthy bass.

 

I'm hoping to get up there one more time this fall, I'll try your black jig, but only at the 20ish docks I can kayak to. I'm thinking of throwing an umbrella rig too, never have but looks like fun.

 

I should worm more at night too, a pond near me has huge pickerel I posted about, and I've heard good bass. Hopefully find some fatties this fall.