Deep summer fishing

[CMorg]

What do you guys look for when fishing deep water ? The club tourney today was won in deep water. I believe it was deep cranking that scored the most fish. How , and what do you look for ? Thanks guys.

[Bassboss]

Well, being a shore fisher man, their is not a whole lot I can do as far as find deep structure! However, there are a few tricks!

I always look for points on the bank, those will usually lead to under water points as well. It's also pretty easy to find some kind of drop off. I find the grass edge with a crank bait, or worm, and'll fish that! Also if their are any drainage pipes or anything like that, it's a good bet that their will be channel infront of it. Near by their will be a point, and drop off, these are great if you can find them!! I like attacking them with a crankbait, worm, jig, or hollow swimbait! Fish as close to the weeds and structure as you can git!

[geezer1]

Originally Posted by CMorg

What do you guys look for when fishing deep water ? The club tourney today was won in deep water. I believe it was deep cranking that scored the most fish. How , and what do you look for ? Thanks guys.

Deep water depth is relative to the body of water & where on that water you're fishing. Sometimes it's 12', other times it's 30', for example. Without getting into thermocline, oxygen content, etc., lets use the excellent example of dropoffs that Bassboss gave because dropoffs are generally where suspended deep fish can be found. Yes, the dropoff is a sweet spot, but fishing the dropoff because it's a dropoff may or may not produce fish. We want to find the area of the dropoff that's going to hold fish (a cut into the underwater terrain, a shelf, a laydown, standing timber, a rock or brush pile, etc.) That will be the sweet spot on the sweet spot. That's pretty much my mindset when hunting deep water fish...find the sweet spot on the sweet spot. In the interest of time, I usually use electronics to locate these, but they can be found with rod & reel.There are other factors, of course, but hope this brief synopsis helps.

[carolina-rig-01]

Deep water fishing is my favorite way to fish. I like to think I can hold my own up in shallow water but I consider deep water fishing my strength. Electronics are very important when it comes to fishing deep water. Obviously the top of the line electronics are going to help you more than cheap electronics but whatever you have it's important to know everything about them. They will of course show you ledges, brush piles and stuff like that but they will also show you what the bottom is made out of and when if changes from say mud to rock and this is valuable information because the transitions can be very key areas.

I look for points that are shallow flat points that either run along a channel or run out and drop off into a channel because these give fish the oppertunity to come up shallow and feed and return to deep water easily. If these points have anything else that makes them attractive like a brush pile or a rock pile that is even better. Unless I have already figured out a pattern that clued me in to what depth I need to focus on, I will start out where the point drops off into deep water and work my way in while fan casting all over the point.

Deep brush piles and the like are pretty easy to attack, just keep your bait in and around them as long as you can.

Under water humps are also great areas to catch deeper fish. Work these over really hard from a lot of angles and pay attention to anything that feels different, like a group of larger rocks or maybe even one stump..........just anything that might hold fish.

Deep fishing is a really broad subject that I could talk for hours about and still not cover it all but I hope some of this helps you out. Keep one thing in mind though. You can fish one deep water spot for hours without catching a fish, then hook one fish and the whole school might come to life and you may catch a limit in 5 minutes so don't give up on a spot if you are sure there are fish there just stay with them and give them a lot of looks with different baits at different angles and more times than not you can get them to bite.