From Bassin' Magazine
Water's Calm, Bass Aren't Biting, Now What?
Story By Mark Hicks

It’s common knowledge that wind and waves put bass on the prowl and that glassy water means tough fishing, especially on hot summer days. While most
anglers struggle to get bites on still water, savvy bass pros sometimes make heavy catches under these conditions. That’s because bass hold to predictable places when the water’s flat.

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Although flat-water bass are tentative, you can often sit in one spot and coax several bites. While bass are more aggressive when it’s windy, if you make the right adjustments, you can score big on flat water.

Arkansas angler Scott Suggs has learned the hard way how to make flat-water adjustments. He became the first angler to win $1 million in a single tournament when he claimed the 2007 Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Ouachita in his home state. However, things didn’t go his way when he fished an FLW Tour event at Alabama’s Lake Wheeler in 2005.

Suggs looked through the dam from Wheeler to Lake Guntersville and found huge post-spawn bass there on main-lake grass beds. On the first morning of the tournament, he caught four bass that weighed nearly 18 pounds in 10 casts. Then he moved to another spot and quickly finished his five-bass limit with a 7-pounder. He led the tournament after day one with 24 pounds, 7 ounces.

The weather that day was sunny with a slight breeze, and the bass were active. Suggs caught most of his bass by cranking a crankbait over cuts, turns and points of submerged grass that topped out 4 to 7 feet beneath the surface. He also caught bass by swimming a 7-inch swimbait over deeper grass beds that topped out 12 to 14 feet deep. The key with the swimbait was ticking the top of the grass.

Suggs lost several good bass on the second day of the tournament but managed to bring in a limit that was heavy enough to hold him in second place. He knew he was on enough quality fish to win the $100,000 first prize. All he had to do was land them.

However, the breeze quit on day three, and it took the wind out of Suggs’ sails. The water’s mirror surface shut down the bass. Suggs frantically fished his crankbait and swimbait, but he caught only two bass and fell to ninth place.

Late on the fourth and final day of the tournament, Suggs slowed down and fished the same places in the grass with a Texas-rigged Zoom Brush Hog and a 3⁄4-ounce bullet sinker. The heavy weight pulled the Brush Hog down through the grass to the bottom and helped produce three bass for Suggs. Had he made this adjustment the day before, it’s likely he would have won the tournament.

“Those bass didn’t go anywhere,” Suggs says. “Flat water causes them not to roam. It puts them in specific spots. You have to slow down and put your baits right on them.”

Suggs vowed that he would never again fail to take advantage of flat-water conditions. When the wind dies, he now tempts bass buried in submerged grass with a 5-inch Texas-rigged Berkley Power Hawg and a 3⁄4-ounce sinker. Suggs fishes this bait with a 7-foot-2-inch medium-heavy rod and 15-pound fluorocarbon line.

What does Suggs do when he fishes structure that doesn’t have grass in flat-water conditions?

“I make them bite with a 3⁄4-ounce football jig and a 1⁄4-ounce shaky worm,” he says.

Suggs dresses the football jig with a double-tailed grub and casts it with the same baitcasting outfit he wields when fishing submerged grass. Then he cranks the jig slowly across the bottom so he can feel every stump, rock and pebble. When the weather is breezy, he reels the football jig faster over the bottom. However, the key to success on flat water is a slow drag.

A 6-foot-6-inch medium-action spinning rod and 8-pound fluorocarbon line handle Suggs’ shaky-head chores. He rigs the jig weedless style with a soft-plastic worm and moves it across the bottom by shaking the rod tip. He keeps the bait in touch with the bottom by holding the rod tip high and maintaining a large bow in the line. This makes the worm dance and scoot over the bottom, which is a deadly flat-water ploy.

Another fisherman who fares well on flat water is Edwin Evers. When the water’s surface turns to glass, Evers knows that offshore bass move tight to cover, hug the bottom and shrink their strike zone.

“When that happens, you’ve got to be more precise with your casts,” Evers says. “Your bait has to be right on the stump, brushpile or whatever cover the bass are using.”

Brushpiles were the productive cover when Evers fished a tournament at Kentucky Lake. The bass were holding on points and creek-channel ledges 15 to 18 feet deep. Evers found planted brushpiles on the edges of these drop-offs with his LCG

and marked them as waypoints on his GPS.

When the water went flat, Evers picked off the bass by making accurate casts to the brushpiles and slowly shaking a 6-inch Texas-rigged plastic worm through the branches. He matched the worm with a 3/0 hook and a 3⁄16-ounce tungsten sinker. He also placed a small glass bead between the sinker and the hook to add the allure of sound. His worm rod is a medium-heavy-action baitcaster paired with 14-pound fluorocarbon line.

When flat-water bass relate to cover that’s 20 feet or deeper, Evers puts a 43⁄4-inch green pumpkin/purple plastic worm precisely in their faces by fishing it on a drop-shot rig. He Texas-rigs the worm with a 1/0 hook fixed 8 to 10 inches above a round 3⁄8-ounce drop-shot weight on 8-pound fluorocarbon line.

To tame line twists, Evers rigs a 6-foot-6-inch medium-action spinning rod with a spinning reel that has a large-diameter spool.

This combination paid off with a second-place finish when Evers fished a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Missouri’s Table Rock Lake in September 2006. He found clusters of spotted bass relating to brushpiles 32 to 38 feet deep. The bass were anywhere from the bottom to 5 feet above the bottom, and Evers could usually see them on his bow depthfinder while fishing.

When the bass were suspended above the bottom, he held the drop-shot rig at their level instead of dropping it to the bottom. Although most fishermen shake their rod tips when drop-shotting, Evers got more bites by holding the rod dead still for 2 minutes or more, especially when the water was flat.

“The bass were really spooky,” Evers recalls. “If I twitched the rod, I could see the bass moving away on my LCG. If I held the rod still, the bass hung

around and eventually nabbed the worm.”

Dead-sticking the same drop-shot rig came through for Evers with a first-place finish at a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on Lake Erie last summer. This time Evers was fishing for smallmouth bass on offshore reefs 36 to 42 feet deep. The bass were grouped up every day of the tournament, and Evers never lowered his drop-shot rig until he saw the bass on his LCG.

The wind blew on the first three days of the tournament, which generally turns on Lake Erie’s smallmouth bass. In fact, it was so blustery that the second day of the event was cancelled. The wind died down on the fourth and final day when Evers eased over his most productive spot with his electric motor.

That’s when his LCG lit up with more bass than he had seen at any other time during the tournament. Evidently, the flat water made the bass stop roaming and caused them to gang up.

Evers let his drop-shot rig sink to the school, held the rod still and promptly hooked and landed a hefty smallmouth bass. He repeated this process again and again, and eventually culled a five-bass limit that weighed 23 pounds, 15 ounces. Who says you can’t catch bass on flat water?



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