[Headhunter]

Middle of the hottest day is the best time. Early and late is not IMO. I like to fish from 9 am or so til 5 pm. Last year on the 100+ degree days we were catching more than you keep count of at noon with the sun straight up.

I have been chasing fish in deeper water for longer than I care to admit (over 20 years) and I carry an idiot amount of crankbaits in many colors and cover many depths. I have found them schooled up as shallow as 6' on super hot days.

The guy that taught most of what I know about this type fishing back around 1988 or so fished only plastic worms. We were sitting at a boat dock one day, getting something to eat and a person walked by and said "y'all must hate plastic worms". I looked and we had 20+ rods in the boat, all of them but 2 had a plastic bait and rig of some sort and I still throw a bunch of plastics. Mostly texas rig, a little carolina rig. Sad thing about it, is as much as I enjoy catching these bass, almost my favorite way, when this pattern ends I cannot hardly catch a bass and it usually happens overnight. I believe I could carry dynamite and not even find anything. Depends on a lot of factors, but I have seen them go into this pattern a week before memorial day and I have seen where they did not show up (at least for me) until early august. Spending time on the water means more than being some kind of great fishermen. I could (and have) catch these fish from a canoe. So many do not realize it is not the boat that catches fish. I will put a pic of me and my dad with 2 limits we caught a few years ago (he wanted to keep them, I don't usually kill any bass, I have nothing against eating bass and love to, but a 15" bass is to big to eat IMO) and we caught them in a 12' jon boat with a 1962 18hp evinrude motor I had. It was a great day, 90+ degrees, we caught 30 plus bass, and my dad had a couple over 4 lbs.