Fishing vertically for schooling bass

Sometimes the best fishing is right underneath your seat as Dave Magner explains.

Call me a traditionalist but given my choice of bass fishing techniques, I’ll generally opt to fish the edges. Whether it’s a river or lake, I like to keep my yak moving along the bank, probing away at different bits of structure in search of my quarry. If I can do that while fishing surface lures then it’s happy days and in my opinion yak fishing doesn’t get much better than that. Even if the surface isn’t firing, I’m still happy to toss hardbodies, spinnerbaits or bibless lures in an attempt to trigger a reaction bite.
One of the reasons I prefer this style of fishing is because I know bass go to the edges to feed. This means I am generally putting my lures in front of active fish. That’s also one of the main reasons why fishing the edges is most effective early and late in the day as these are the main periods when bass take advantage of low light situations to hunt down their prey.
Having said all that, it probably sounds strange to be focusing on a fishing technique which is pretty much the exact opposite of the one I’ve just described. Fish, especially bass, don’t feed 24 hours a day. That’s the reality of it. If you want to keep catching fish during the middle of the day, when they are much less responsive to traditional edge fishing techniques, then you have to start thinking vertical and looking for fish on the bottom, away from the shallow edges.
I attribute tournament fishing as the main reason I started focusing on vertical techniques. When you are fishing against top kayak anglers, you simply have to be able to keep hooking fish right throughout the session or you won’t be competitive. While it might not always be satisfying to sit on top of a school of bass trying to annoy them into striking, sometimes it’s just about the only way to extract a bite.

GET ON TOP
The first prerequisite for vertical fishing is to locate a school of fish. Bass are pretty obliging in this regard and they regularly school up in good numbers. This happens most often during the cooler months of the year but even during summer bass can often be found schooling under certain conditions. This could be in an effort to find some relief from the heat by moving into cooler water or simply as a response to sunny weather and clear water which pushes them down into the depths to get away from the brightness.
Finding these schools is usually not too difficult. If you are having a casual fish, then trolling a deep diving lure out the back of your yak while paddling around likely locations can help you to identify where they are hanging. Often the fish won’t be too far away from their favoured feeding grounds, so looking out a bit wider from productive edges is a good way to start. If you troll a fish, simply keep going back over the area and see if you keep hooking them. If you can, it’s a fair bet you’ve found a school to target.
Bass can also be creatures of habit, and in some dams they will school up in the same place year after year. These locations get to be well known and it’s just a matter of asking around to find out where the schools are holding. In fact, sometimes you don’t even need to ask, as some spots are so well known that all you have to do is look out for the flotilla of boats sitting out there over the top of them.
Of course, these approaches will put you in the general area of the fish, but to really get right on top of them; you need a good quality sounder. Not so long ago this would have been considered a real luxury item in a yak, but not these days. The advent of cheap and highly effective units has made it very affordable to fit one on just about any fishing yak.
I’m currently running a Lowrance Elite 5 HDI and it makes finding schooling bass fairly straight forward. It has both traditional colour and downscan imaging displays, and with experience, it’s fairly easy to recognise schools of bass and be able to tell them apart from other stuff like weed and baitfish. Of course, it can’t actually tell you what species of fish are underneath you and I still sometimes find myself working a real good showing of fish only to discover they are catfish. At least I can be confident there are fish underneath me.
The other feature that I have come to rely on quite heavily on my sounder is its GPS readout. Whenever I find a school of fish, I create a waypoint for them. This allows me to keep returning to the exact spot each time. Of course, the schools do move around, so it’s not foolproof. Generally speaking though, if you are sitting on the mark, it’s only a matter of reading the sounder screen as you search the general area and making sure the fish are still there so that you can target them.

TECHNIQUES FOR ON TOP
Once you find yourself sitting over the top of a school of bass, it’s time to work out how best to target them. There is a range of sinking lures you can use, and deciding on the best approach usually depends on what sort of mood you think the fish are in.
If you are looking at your sounder screen and all the fish are hugging the bottom, then it’s a fair bet they are inactive and you are going to have to be pretty subtle about it. If they are sitting up off the bottom and moving around then you should be able to adopt a more aggressive approach.
If the fish are in a feeding mood, then rub your hands together in anticipation and start with similar reaction lures to those you would use around the edges. Spinnerbaits and tailspinners are a good way to kick off. If you are using either of these options, then look for relatively heavy but compact models. The heavier these types of lures are (within reason), the easier it will be to keep them down close to where the fish are holding during the retrieve. Plain white and gold are good colour schemes to employ as they imitate bony bream which the schooling fish like to feed on.
Bibless lures like Jackalls are another good option if the fish are being cooperative. They can be worked through the school in a lift and drop fashion and if you allow them to sink to the bottom between hops, you can be fairly confident that you are working your lure right through the school of fish. I generally use a light baitcaster to fish Jackalls and spinnerbaits as you can really fine tune the retrieve speed and control the amount of rod tip movement with a shorter
overhead outfit.

GOT THE SULKS?
If the fish are sulking on the bottom, this is the time to go for a finesse option. In this sort of mood the fish generally won’t be feeding, so you are going to have to use a presentation that either looks so lifelike that they can’t resist or keep a lure in front of them long enough to annoy them into hitting it.
If you just want to put a fish onboard, I don’t think you can go past a little blade. By little, I mean bream sized blades around 35 mm in length. There are some terrific little finesse blades on the market at the moment but it’s hard to go past Ecogear’s diminutive 35 mm VX and ZX or Berkley 37 mm Power Blades, although TT Ghost Blades can also offer a very subtle presentation.
These little blades are best fished on light spin gear with quite subtle rod work. Don’t rip them up and down; just work them gently with short but crisp lifts of the rod tip. Give them plenty of time to rest on the bottom in between lifts too. I don’t know if the fish actually pick them up off the bottom but the number of times I’ve hooked up just as I’ve gone to lift the rod tip after a pause is too often to be a coincidence.
Ice jigs are another option if the fish are truly shut down. These things are some of the weirdest looking bass lures you will find, but they can also be really effective. Ice jigs only work vertically, which is completely understandable when you remember they are designed to be fished through holes
in the ice.

Regardless of their original design parameters, these things are perfect for bouncing on the noses of inactive fish. You have to be right over the top of the school and you tea bag them up and down with short lifts and drops of the rod tip. Ice jigs swim on the drop, and you have to follow the lure back down with your rod tip as this is when most of the takes will occur.
One little tactic I employ with both blades and ice jigs is to coat them with a fish attractant. It probably doesn’t make a huge difference, but I do think it helps the fish to hold onto the lure a bit longer and it seems to turn little hits into more positive hook-ups. I use Squidgy S Factor but I’m sure other types would also be effective.
If the fishing is really tough and nothing else has worked, then it’s time to reach for some jigheads and soft plastics. I’ve deliberately left this approach to last as presenting plastics to shut down fish is about the most technical form of lure fishing you are likely to encounter. There are so many subtle variations you can employ that there’s not really room here to go into the necessary detail. Suffice to say even a slight change in jighead weight, design, soft plastic body style, scent or presentation can make all the difference and you generally need to fish deep and slow (very slow) and keep trying different combinations of heads and tails until you find what the fish want on the day.

I have found myself turning to soft plastics regularly during competition fishing and it was the approach I used to win the inaugural Hobie Bass Nation Kayak tournament at Lake McDonald on the Sunshine Coast recently. By switching between Berkley Dam Deep jigheads in weights of 7, 14 and even a hefty 21 g, I was able to keep my plastic right down on the bottom and slow roll it past some of the bigger bass which were holding on the edge of the school. Even though the bite was generally tough, finding the right combination had the fish sucking the lures so far down their throats that it took long nose pliers to extract them. When pressured fish respond that positively, you know it’s well worth the effort required to learn the finer points of deep water
soft plastics.
START LOOKING DOWN
While the gear and approach described here might sound a bit technical if you haven’t tried them before, it actually isn’t that hard to master if you put the time in on the water. Sure, learning to read your sounder screen accurately can take some practice, but if you get out there and start finding and then hooking a few bass, you will soon pick it up and develop the necessary confidence in your ability to decipher what you are seeing on the screen. So, if the edges aren’t firing as well as you would like, it might be time to get out there in the open and start having a look down. You just never know what you might find sitting right under your yak.
Dave Magner lives in the rum city of Bundaberg. He is an experienced canoe and kayak angler, who enjoys chasing the wide range of fresh and saltwater species on offer in his corner of south east Queensland. He competes regularly in kayak angling tournaments and he has recently obtained qualifications as a canoe and kayak instructor. Dave currently fishes from a Hobie Pro Angler 14.