Tips For Troubleshooting a Tough Summertime Bite

If the summer fishing doldrums limit your bass and walleye catches, Lund Pro Jamie Bruce has a tournament-proven strategy to help you grind out bites when conditions are challenging. Read on to learn about his two-pronged approach for triggering strikes when fishing pressure, boat traffic, forage abundance, and other factors that can stall any angler's summertime fishing action.

Skip Conventional Bass and Walleye Fishing Tactics

Peak into the rod locker in Bruce’s 2075 Pro-V Bass XS when he’s up against a tough bite, and you’ll see two distinct fishing styles represented. There will be dainty, ultra-finesse presentations, and there will be big, reaction-style baits.

What you won’t find are conventional bass and walleye baits. He explains that pressured, inactive, and selective fish rarely react positively to middle-of-the-road presentations. Thus, Bruce’s tough-bite approach involves using baits from the extreme ends of the fishing-techniques spectrum.

Get Aggressive with Hard-Baits

Power fishing with a fast-moving lure to cover water and trigger strikes has saved Bruce’s bacon many times in the summer doldrums. Aggressively snap-jigging a 1-1/8 ounce Rapala Magnum Jigging Rap can rile up hits from stubbornly selective walleye holding in deep water, for example. The lure’s fast sink rate, combined with hard rod snaps, causes it to dart upwards and sideways erratically, stimulating a walleye’s predatory instincts.

Leveraging speed and commotion to get bass biting in challenging conditions is also standard fare for Bruce. When up against smallmouth with bellies full of mayflies during a hatch, for instance, a Rapala X-Rap Pop retrieved energetically across the surface activates a bass’ inherent hunting tendencies.

“You need something big and loud to get them up off the bottom,” he said. “It’s a reaction thing… fish don’t understand what they’re doing until they’re hooked.”

Lean On Ultra-Finesse

Polarizing the above bold, rapid-fire tactics are various small, natural, slow-moving presentations Bruce employs to grind out bites in challenging conditions over summer months. Finesse tactics have long been in his fisherman's arsenal, but their potency has increased with the arrival of forward-facing sonar, allowing specific fish to be targeted with a tantalizing morsel. Case in point, a slip bobber used to dangle live bait on a weightless hook just above a walleye is the closest thing to a skeleton-key presentation he’s found for lock-jawed fish.

A tiny, finesse swimbait, like Rapala’s CrushCity 2.75-inch The Suspect on a 1/16-ounce jig head is another ultra-finesse superstar.

Cast it out to fish, let it drop to the feeding depth, and then “reel it as painfully slow as you can,” he recommends. Bass, unmoved by reaction baits, have difficulty resisting this micro swimmer. Walleye are equally gullible to finesse swimbaits lazily passing within striking distance.

Applying An Extreme Approach To Fishing Locations   

Bruce is also known to follow an end-of-the-spectrum strategy when deciding where to fish, which is especially true during competitions.

“As the bass tournament season starts here at the beginning of July, I take a similar extreme approach as I do to baits. I either go super shallow where I think no one is fishing to catch the biggest ones, or way out to sea to focus on the bait-eaters, and totally abandon mid-range depths.”

Boat Choice Matters

Bruce recognizes the many advantages his Lund 2075 Pro-V Bass XS provides when fishing in such contrasting habitats. The vessel’s ability to handle shallow and rough water conditions with equal proficiency proved advantageous during various Bassmaster Open tournaments.

“I have one of the few boats that can fish both extremely shallow and extremely deep, and I saw that in the Opens last year. I could go run up the swamps with everyone with a relatively shallow draft and catch largemouth. And when fishing the mouth of Lake Ontario in big water in the wind, I’d be fine to stay out there and hold position when other bass boats were having waves crashing over the bow.”

Naturally, the performance and fishability of the Pro-V Bass XS provide equal value when Bruce is walleye fishing. Lund’s legendary Deep-V, IPS hull design and offshore capability are certainly relevant for plying lake basins for giant walleye-eating ciscoes and lake herring.

The next time you’re in the middle of the summer doldrums, try Bruce’s two-prong approach. Skipping mid-range presentations and avoiding mid-depth locations is a bit extreme, but after first experiencing success with the method, you won’t think twice about following the strategy.