Deep Water Fishing

[SoFlaBassAddict]

So I finally broke down and bought a decent depth finder to use on my home lake (Humminbird 570).  As I've motored around a little, I've realized how much unfished area there is on this lake.  Let me preface this by stating that this lake was a fill pit used for building up the adjacent properties.  It has very short banks underwater (5'-7' from the shoreline) that drop steeply.  There are steps on the dropoffs (picture a giant staircase).  Some of the areas have lots of milfoil/hydrilla, some parts of the drops are semi-rocky or thick sediment. It was stocked by the FWC several years ago and now supports a fairly healthy population of Largemouth, bluegill, peacocks, and other smaller baitfish species.

As I've looked around the depth in most areas of the lake are between 35-45 feet deep.  The bottom is somewhat hard, somewhat soft (rocks here and there on top of thick sediment).  I have found several really nice features and marked some areas that are full of fish.  I've known of spots before that hold fish, but never realized how far out and how deep some of the structure really is.

So, as a start I'm looking for advice on what you guys think I should throw in this deep water.  Worms with heavy sinkers?  Jigs (I'm horrible with jigs, but this is a good chance to get better)?  Cranks?  and what kind of rigs.  I've rarely fished a Carolina rig or a drop shot, but now I can see where they might become used a lot here.

Thanks for any advice as I'm really looking forward to trying out some new techniques to catch fish.

[brushhoggin]

wheres catt

[D4u2s0t]

what depth are the fish at?  That will play a big difference in technique... if the fish are at 20 feet, a deep crank could work, if they're sitting at the bottom, drop shot, carolina or texas rig is what I would try.

[RobE]

SoFla, that sounds a lot like the borrow pits that I fished in MS as a kid, and isn't too far removed from the bluffs that I now fish in a man-made lake in the Ozarks.

I'll bet that if you follow those 'dropoffs', you will find that they decend gradually. These are the 'roads' that the trucks climbed as the pit deepened. Hence the stair effect. This vertical structure can be very attractive to fish. Your bottom conditions sound very much like good craw habitat, especially with the rocks. I favor a long rod (7' MH F) to throw a jig a good distance and work it S L O W L Y  down the steps. You will know when it falls. Don't take in line... let it fall and follow with the rod tip. Worms rigged TX are a good choice, too. Leave the weight loose - don't peg it - and stay at 1/4 to 3/8 until you get deeper than 30. A slow fall off of each ledge will tempt a pickup.

Cranks are also a good choice if the fish are active and you can work it paralell to the drop at the depth that you need. Always remember that Depth and Speed outweigh Color!

   

[Taylor Fishin 4 life]

mabye even big spoons to

[SoFlaBassAddict]

what depth are the fish at? That will play a big difference in technique... if the fish are at 20 feet, a deep crank could work, if they're sitting at the bottom, drop shot, carolina or texas rig is what I would try.

Tonight while motoring around I marked lots of suspended fish.  20'-30' in 45' water.  Earlier today fish were mostly sticking to the bottom.  Several bait balls with feeding fish on a point that I frequent had suspending fish.

[SoFlaBassAddict]

SoFla, that sounds a lot like the borrow pits that I fished in MS as a kid, and isn't too far removed from the bluffs that I now fish in a man-made lake in the Ozarks.

I'll bet that if you follow those 'dropoffs', you will find that they decend gradually. These are the 'roads' that the trucks climbed as the pit deepened. Hence the stair effect. This vertical structure can be very attractive to fish. Your bottom conditions sound very much like good craw habitat, especially with the rocks. I favor a long rod (7' MH F) to throw a jig a good distance and work it S L O W L Y down the steps. You will know when it falls. Don't take in line... let it fall and follow with the rod tip. Worms rigged TX are a good choice, too. Leave the weight loose - don't peg it - and stay at 1/4 to 3/8 until you get deeper than 30. A slow fall off of each ledge will tempt a pickup.

Cranks are also a good choice if the fish are active and you can work it paralell to the drop at the depth that you need. Always remember that Depth and Speed outweigh Color!

There are craws in the lake for certain. I've found them in the early mornings and at night. Little black stinkers. The drop offs actually descend pretty rapidly, mind you I haven't really had the chance to explore the banks with the sounder thoroughly.

I think one of my biggest problems is that I'm mostly a shallow water type of guy while bass fishing. Using a baitcaster to toss a jig or a worm is easy. It's the getting enough line out that kills me. I always feel that I'm having to strip WAY too many times to hit bottom. Could that mean in this situation I should really loosen up the spool tension on the reel? As far as color goes, I figured at the deeper depths that color was a lot less important, everything is probably contrast at that depth anyway. I figured colors like blacks, blues, greens, etc etc were probably the better choice because they absorb more light.

I will say this, turning the TVG off and looking at the raw image on the 570 was cool. Thats the first time I've been able to watch a jig bounce around on my sonar for a long time. On my offshore boat we've got a nice high dollar sounder, and rarely use it. Most of the time we're trolling offshore...

[Hellbenderman]

Try this thread...Old Timers Round Up Part 2 Deep Water Fishing...lot's of good info for you, especially nice piece about the relationship between food supply and depth.

[Catt]

The lures and techniques already mentioned are fine and the only thing I'll add is I hardly ever fish structure down hill. When you position you boat in deep water and cast shallow working your lure down hill your lure is only in contact with the bottom for a portion of the length of the cast. I position my boat shallow and cast deep working my lure up hill staying in contact with the bottom the entire length of my cast.

To me fishing structure is all about bottom contact which is why I throw Texas Rigs, Big  Jig-N-Craws, Carolina Rigs, & Deep Cranks.

That being said you will plenty of opportunities at learning suspended bass

[SoFlaBassAddict]

Naturally I go out for a little while and the wind picks up.  Made it really hard to fish the lake in my zodiac.  I'm hoping to God that I'll finally find a boat that I really want to buy for my lake soon.  I don't want to settle on a 32" Jon.  I really want something wider than that for the kids.  I may need to rig up a sea anchor or something to help hold me in place for now.  I probably should also invest in some marker buoys.

Now I just need to figure out an efficient way to drop deep with a baitcaster.  Spinning gear is easy...

[Catt]

You can simply cast your Texas Rig, Jig-N-Craw, or Carolina Rig as far as you can and allow it to sink on it's own.

You can simply cast your Texas Rig, Jig-N-Craw, or Carolina Rig as far as you can and strip 3-5 arms lenghts of line.

Or simply use heavy weights allowing you farther casting distance.

I use all 3 at various times through the day with no particular one having precedence over the other.

With the Texas Rig I prefer lighter weights with 3/16, 1/4, & 5/16 oz

With the Jig-N-Craw I prefer heavier weights with 3/8, 1/2, or 3/4 oz

With the Carolina Rig I vary from 3/8-1 oz

For suspended bass it's deep cranks, drop shots, or jigging lures

[Raul]

Also, heavy spinnerbaits, personally I prefer single blade spinners ( colorado or willoleaf ) because the blade spins as it drops, so you can yo-yo the spinnerbait.

Lipless cranks also serve you well for deep water fishing as countdown baits.

C-rigging minnow style cranks also works for deep water fishing.

[WRB]

If you are learning to fish jigs; start with a football head style with a Hula Grub for both the skirt and trailer. We call this jig type a spider jig. The football head works well for deep structured lakes like you have discribed. A good jig is the Yamamoto 1/2 oz black head with either Owner or Gamakasu 4/0 hook and Yamamoto's Twin tail Hula grub, 4" & 5". Colors depend on what the bass prefer in that particular lake; Dark green with red flake, Cinnamon with black flake and black with blue flake should get you bit.

You can also C-rig the same grubs. Little George type tail spins can also be very good to cover the entire water column. At night a Texas or Florida rigged plastic worm is hard to beat.

If the lake has some big bass you might want to give a 5" Bluegill swimbait a try.

All the other lures mentioned should work.

Largemouth bass in small steep walled pit lakes tend to be cruisers, patrolling the perimeters 1st deep break. The bass will hold on the outside structure, but tend to move towards the bank to feed because most of the prey is located there.

WRB

PS, just trying to keep this reply specific to your steep walled pit lake with rocky structure. Fishing parallel to the walls or structure is your highest percentage technique. Shadows become "soft stucture" in deep clear lakes.

[RoLo]

Everyone has given you good advice on deepwater fishing, so allow me to shift gears.

There is no magic in fishing "deep", and no stigma attached to fishing "shallow".

In saltwater, we often fished in water depths around 200 ft deep, which in my opinion

is easier for pinpointing fish, compared to pinpointing fish scattered on a flat shoal.

The location of deepwater fish is laterally compressed by rapid depth change (drop-offs).

With respect to largemouth bass, your depth sounder is just as valuable in 2 to 6 ft of water,

as in water between 6 and 20 ft deep. Although the lake zone between the 35 & 45 ft depth lines

may indeed be unfished, it might also be fishless. Ole mossback adores plant life,

and in water between 35 & 45 ft deep, bass would be forced to abandon the milfoil and hydrilla.

While smallmouth bass, walleyes, pike and muskies are commonly unrelated to weeds,

that is rarely the case with largemouth bass, in lakes where lush plant life is available.

Roger

[SoFlaBassAddict]

So far no real luck with largemouth in the deeper water.  Earlier today while there was a break in the wind I went out with a dropshot and a zoom finesse worm and had several nibbles from what I'm guessing were bluegill and other assorted baitfish.  I've found several spots where the small schools of baitfish have congregated over the last two days.  Mark them on the graph with no problem and drop on them.  Now what I really need to do is pinpoint the structures that should have bass holding on them.

RoLo:  I understand that largemouth need love having some form of plantlife to hang out around, I've been looking for the humps that have some sort of grass and whatnot attached to them.  I've found a couple, nothing that I've really been able to fish yet.

WRB:  I would imagine that a large portion of the bass on this lake are cruisers, but at the same time, largemouths are structure oriented.  I've got to think that some of the large rock piles I've found have got to have fish somewhere near them.  I'll have to try out the spider jig like you mentioned.  I believe I've got some Hula Grub's stuffed away in the garage.  I've never really done much c-rigging here.  The one time I did use it, I caught a small dink.  It may well be time for me to use it again now that I'm finding some of the offshore structure.

Raul:  I've thought about using a lipless crank and letting it drop down to the depth where I'm marking fish.  I just need to remember to tie one on and give it a whirl.

[SoFlaBassAddict]

Thankfully I've got the rest of the week off and have plenty of time to play around and try some new stuff out.  I just need to actually get to sleep earlier so I can fish earlier.  Drop the kids off at school, and then keep fishing.

[Blade-Runner]

Try a Ledgebuster spinnerbait or drag a heavy tube jig slowly on the spots you've found. Sometimes works for me...Of course that's after I've tried deep cranks, C-rigs, etc.

[Bassin_Fin@tic]

All good advice so far but let me stress the importance of the c-rig. If you want to learn that body of water then you need to throw the c-rig to death.You can pick a sweet spot apart with a jig or t-rig but the c-rig covers much more water and is better at initially locating fish.It can allow you to locate the hard bottom areas and the sweet spots,nooks and crannies etc that the fish prefer.Top 2 baits for that situation would be a senko bait or a paca craw on the c-rig. Also crank it to death at different depths and use the lipless with a yo yo retrieve crashing it into the dropoffs and letting it fall off the edges as well into deeper water. The more active fish will generaly be on top of the ledges in 6-8 ft of water and the inactive ones will be suspended off the structure over deeper water.

Just to let you know it has been my experience that the fish in those kind of pits can get really picky at times of which direction your casting and retrieving,especially when the wind is blowing. Yeah everyone says work uphill but you really got to try both ways until you figure out how they want it.I've seen too many times that dropping the bait off into deeper water is the ticket.After you catch some then keep doing the same thing on all similar spots, same direction. Find a good spot and work around in a circle. Once you learn the body of water more you will be able to more easily go out and find the right spots after fishing it under a variety of conditions. Yes these fish do tend to cruise a lot so don't abandon one area totally.If you get the chance while your out then re-visit it a couple more times during the day.The bass may be following bait or waiting in the depths until schools of bait come into the area and then move up and stage on the structure for ambush.