A quick look at last weekend’s tournament results from Alabama to Ohio reveals that many bass are on mid-depth ledges and steeper shorelines, as opposed to the deep structure when many anglers are still fishing. Of course, any spot that has hydrilla and other offshore grass is must-fish. This is true on Clark’s Hill where hydrilla is a tad scarce, as well as Florida’s Kissimmee Chain where it dominates the waterscape and pushes fish – and fishermen – to its deepest edges.

Wood cover in the form of stumps and laydowns are starting to produce numbers of quality bass instead of the occasional lone lunker.

Are your fish moving up already? Is the deep summer bite still on?

“I caught most of my fish on a Zoom Horny Toad and a Knight’s Custom Lures buzzbait around main-lake hydrilla,” said Jayme Rampey, an FLW Tour rookie who won the recent BFL Savannah River Division super tournament on Clarks Hill Lake. “There’s not much hydrilla in the lake right now, so you could pretty much get a bite wherever you found it. It was pretty tough and I didn’t catch many, but the ones I caught were good ones.”

On Indian Lake in Ohio Cody Seeger won a grinder of a Buckeye Division super tournament. “I practiced on Friday and keyed in on a grass bite with light tackle,” said Seeger. “I knew the fish were in the grass, I just had to get them to bite.” Seeger’s fish were in 1-to-6 feet of water.

Black-and-blue jigs produced wins on wood cover on Kentucky Lake where Brent Anderson found them in 4-to-8 feet on humps and Alabama’s Lake Eufaula where Patrick Dobbins ran 30 miles upriver and picked apart laydowns that held bream and, therefore, bass.

Deep water sticks were bringing in 2 or 3 fish per day in some of these events.

What do the fish know?:  The fall feeding blitz is right around the corner!