It's 100+ degrees and it seems every fish in the lake goes into witness protection. What do you do?

Give up and wait til October?
Fish only really early and/or really late?
Go exclusively deep water? Docks? Something else?
Do you bother with < 10ft of water? Pitching and flipping?

This is my first summer with a boat and man it's been tough. I could catch them in June but now it's different. I'm not aggravated, I just want to learn and get better.

Thanks for any insight on strategies, techniques, etc.

punt

Study your maps and the contours there of. Find fish shallow early close to deep water on or close to the spots you found on your map work then follow them out to deep water. Keep working at it, as it will take about 20 spots to produce one good spot. It just takes time on the water and a lot of map work.

2, 3, and 4.

Are you fishing Lake Waco?

My success (and I'm still learning also) has been to hit the shallow creek beds and bank cover in the early part of the day. Then I try to work shaded areas.
And then I try c rigging drop offs, humps etc.
By then it's noon - one pm and I am headed off the water.

After my last 2 trips I was ready to sell my boat. I loathe the summer heat and the fishing.

Yes, almost exclusively on Lake Waco but I have hit a few smaller lakes as well with similar results (poor).

My plan has been similar to that, but I've been able to get out close to sunset more often than sunrise.

I fished Fork Friday and only bites I got were on docks and they were dinks. I fished for 12 hours and only had maybe 5 to show for it.

Time On The Water

People like to go out in the morning and evening in hot summer, so does fish. So go fishing at that time and ya'll have good catch.

I look at the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day as my off season.

My primary fishing lake is also the primary lake for several billion jet skis and pleasure boaters. The fishing is fantastic in the spring and I get out there a ton. Once it starts to really warm everyone else wants to be on the lake and by Memorial Day, I still have fun out there but not as much fun as the rest of the year, so I let them have it. I go from fishing 3-4 times a week to once every other week at the most.

Once school starts the lake traffic drops and by Labor Day it really slows down. This is when I'm ready to head back out and fish hard again.

So to answer your question, I let the pleasure boaters have the lake for the summer where I will focus on other things and only fish occasionally early AM here and there, so in some ways I do give up. I spend a lot of time prepping gear, organizing, cleaning, and upgrading but not a ton of time on the water.

Summer patterns are fun to fish though and if I lived on a lake with fewer pleasure boaters I would fish more. Generally the fish are going to be schooling in deeper cooler water on main lake points or areas where there are fast vertical breaks. Banging the bank works but usually for smaller fish or in areas with heavy cover. In the summer bass want deep water, thick cover or current.

In another month the fishing will be fantastic, be patient!

Swim a lot and fish live bait.

Thanks everyone, this is all very helpful. Keep it coming if you have something.

We were pitching Texas rigs in the shade in less than 10ft of water and catching fish basically our whole trip on Saturday. We tried about everything in the boat deep and shallow but shade and a Texas rig were the only consistent bites. We had a slow start with a motor issue and fished from about 8AM to 12:30 and probably caught 15 or so fish with the biggest about 3 1/2 lbs. We like to fish shallow and I think that can be done all year long but the quality is not always there. I think it takes work, sunscreen, a lot of water and gatorade to catch them consistently in the summer but it can be done.

This gave me a hearty chuckle.