Fishing Minnesota Bass Shallow in September

Both largemouth and smallmouth will use shallow weed pockets in the fall.

It’s fall and time to get psyched for fall bass fishing. The one thing that tells me to move shallow in fall is a steep drop in water temperatures. When the water temp goes down 8-10 degrees it’s time to think about going to shallow weeds for bass. By going shallow I’m talking 4-8 feet and I look for areas with pockets of weeds. I avoid weedlines and flats of weeds. This might mean putting your trolling motor in high and looking for these areas.

I like to fish light gear with jig worms, it’s fun and effective. In the video you see below I am casting jig worms into pockets of weeds. These pockets can be very small…barely bigger than my boat and both largemouth bass and smallmouth bass use these areas after the water drops to the low 60’s. There are many lakes in central Minnesota that offer this opportunity as well as Western Wisconsin and both of the Dakotas. So if you are looking to catch many bass on light gear the days after a good cold front can be the best time to give it a try.

Smallmouth and largemouth in the same habitat.

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Some Big Bass Are Shallow During a Minnesota Summer

Shallow water in mid-summer?

In lakes I do not know, I start shallow.

On a mid-summer morning I put my boat in Green Lake by Zimmerman. I’ve had the hankering to fish this lake for a few years. At the boat landing I took a look around and saw an expanse of emergent weeds in front of the creek to the east. So without firing up the outboard I started to fish this shoreline run of weeds.

It had rained a bunch the night before and into the morning. I can’t know whether or not the water flow was more than usual but I’m a shallow water guy, when I fish a new lake I go shallow for a few reasons.

Experience has taught me that there are almost always bass shallow. Combine that with what I guessed was a flow of water above the average flow entering the lake I guessed that bass would be in the area. I started out with by running a buzzbait thru the emergent weeds and this produced about 6 blow-ups and 3 bass caught all around 15-16 inches. Good start. I worked down the shoreline west of the creek and little action was had with only one more largemouth. Now I had to make a move so I went to the West near where the deeper water came close to the shore. I worked some shoreline habitat in 3-4 feet and some trees that I could see sticking out of the water. This area had some scattered bass that ate my offering of a jig worm rigged weedless. These bass were on the small side of 12 inches but I kept fishing this area because my eyes could see structure that said bass will live here. Switching baits a few times included casting that buzzer again and the time tested jig and pig produced a few more small largemouth around clumps of weeds. I probably spent two hours working toward the South. It was fun but none of the big bass that rumors had informed me of ate my offers.

Now I made move to the East shoreline just North of that point. My go-to shallow presentation is what I refer to as a twitch rig (pictured left), a soft plastic rigged weedless and weightless on a 4/0 wide gap hook. Staying shallow I began to work towards the point. It took a bit but I finally connected on a couple of two pounders. Then I reached the actual point. This point has trees overhanging the water and it looked prime for summer bass that my mind said bass live here. Skipping my bait through the overhanging limbs I envisioned numerous bites. I caught one bass and missed another. Now looking at a pocket adjacent to the biggest limb, it was about 10 feet over the water, I skipped the twitch rig into that pocket and I let the bait settle in about a foot of water. I picked up the bait and began a slow twitch back to the boat and bam a big largemouth ate the bait. This is a big bass in the 20 inch range! I had my GoPro running at the time and the big bass was successfully landed and released. Check out the video below.

It was now around 11am and I could see another round of storms was approaching so I continued down the shoreline toward the boat landing. I caught one more fish on the twitch rig, another nice one around 3 pounds. With time running out I left the lake just in time with a dozen bass caught all in less than 4 feet of water.

20 Inch Shallow Water Bass in July

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