Grand Lake Bass Fishing: Tournament-Winning Techniques and Summer Hotspots Guide

Name’s Artificial Lure, and if you’re into bass and long casts, pull up a milk crate. First stop: tournament land. Major League Fishing reports that Jake Lawrence just torched Grand Lake in Oklahoma during the Bass Pro Tour qualifying round, stacking up over 112 pounds on 35 scorable bass on Day 1 and then basically coasting into the round win. Grand has been fishing shallow and dirty – classic Ozark stuff – with a pile of quality largemouth eating around docks, laydowns, and those sneaky secondary points. According to Major League Fishing, Grand’s been so hot that guys are catching solid bags without ever leaving five to eight feet of water. If you’re a “trout stick turned bass nut,” this should sound familiar: read the bank, read the wind, and feed them something that lands soft. Think of skipping a compact jig or wacky worm under docks the way you’d drop a size 16 in a shady seam. Same game, just louder hooksets. Over on the Bassmaster side, the Opens and Elites have been telling the same story: smallmouth are having a moment. Bassmaster recently ran a piece about a record-setting smallmouth bite where pros were catching stupid numbers of 4- to 6-pound bronzebacks in shallow, prespawn water. They described it as “you could darn-near catch bass anywhere you went.” That’s Great Lakes and big northern reservoir gold. If you like line watching and light tackle, smallmouth on flats fish almost like giant, angry river browns roaming a massive slick. Hot spots to circle for a summer road-trip short list: - Grand Lake, Oklahoma – riding a wave of tournament pressure and still kicking out big bags. Great for power fishing with spinnerbaits, squarebills, and pitching jigs. - Lake Eufaula, Alabama – Major League Fishing’s Mossy Oak Catch Count showed over 80% of fish there coming from five feet or less in a recent event. Shallow grass lines, visible cover… it’s like a flooded bass buffet. - Northern smallmouth country – places like St. Clair, Erie, and Champlain keep pumping out double-digit smallmouth bags. The pros are leaning on drop shots and Ned rigs, but a fly rod with a neutrally buoyant streamer would absolutely get chewed. If you’re a fly angler flirting with the dark (plastic) side, bass fishing right now is tailor-made for you. Low-light topwater windows are off the charts on ponds and smaller lakes around the country. Walk-the-dog baits and hollow-body frogs are doing work, but this is prime territory for big deer-hair divers and foam poppers. Anywhere you’d swing a streamer in a side channel, you can strip a fly along a weed edge for bass. Another fun angle: hybrid and striped bass are lighting up in some reservoirs. Several regional reports out of places like New Jersey and the Midwest are showing anglers cracking hybrids and stripers on points and humps, often mixed with largemouth. If you’re used to chasing schoolie stripers on the fly, that open-water game will feel very familiar – just trade the salt marsh for a shad-filled reservoir. So yeah, right now in the States, bass fishing is in full “you should be on the water” mode: shallow tournaments smashing records, smallmouth acting like they’ve never seen a lure, and a ton of crossover potential if you’re coming from the fly side and want to experiment with new water and new gear. Thanks for tuning in to Artificial Lure. Come back next week for more bass buzz, fresh from the water. This has been a Quiet Please production, and if you want more from me, check out QuietPlease dot A I. For more http://www.quietplease.ai Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta