oldfella1962
Senior Member
Okay here is the scenario with specifics just to keep things focused: I'm talking about a five acre pond with a maximum depth of about seven feet with clear water, some shoreline weeds and coon tail weeds with a typical bass/bluegill/shellcracker population and light fishing pressure in October near Augusta GA not involving a sudden cold front. I am fishing from the shore. Internet searches get into the "fall turnover"/deeper water/spawning thing when you type in cruising bass.
Anyway a pond I fish has schools of bass (about a half dozen of them generally) cruising around near shore all day and until dark - night fishing isn't allowed.
Some are decent sized, up to about three pounds or so. They don't seem spooked when you cast to them, they just meander off and often return in a few minutes or might never leave the area at all. But they are not hitting on anything in my tackle box. I'm using light line and trying different retrieves and depths but they show no aggression or interest.
I did some research on using nightcrawlers and sometimes this does the trick. But I'd like some advice from anyone here on the GON forum who has encountered this situation. Of course the big issue the articles mention is bluegills and other fish attacking the nightcrawlers but again the water is clear and I am very much "sight fishing" like I would be if they were spawning for example. So I would think that no bluegills are venturing into an entire school of bass to pick at a nightcrawler.
The only bluegills I see are feeding off bugs landing/hatching on the water quite a ways off shore.
Bottom line are these bass catchable and if so, would live nightcrawlers be a sensible technique for catching them?
Anyway a pond I fish has schools of bass (about a half dozen of them generally) cruising around near shore all day and until dark - night fishing isn't allowed.
Some are decent sized, up to about three pounds or so. They don't seem spooked when you cast to them, they just meander off and often return in a few minutes or might never leave the area at all. But they are not hitting on anything in my tackle box. I'm using light line and trying different retrieves and depths but they show no aggression or interest.
I did some research on using nightcrawlers and sometimes this does the trick. But I'd like some advice from anyone here on the GON forum who has encountered this situation. Of course the big issue the articles mention is bluegills and other fish attacking the nightcrawlers but again the water is clear and I am very much "sight fishing" like I would be if they were spawning for example. So I would think that no bluegills are venturing into an entire school of bass to pick at a nightcrawler.
The only bluegills I see are feeding off bugs landing/hatching on the water quite a ways off shore.
Bottom line are these bass catchable and if so, would live nightcrawlers be a sensible technique for catching them?