It’s the time of year that the bass are hanging in the stumps as they are looking for hard bottom area’s to finish the spawning process. A unique way to fish these areas is to pull rattle baits or crank baits through the stumps. Doing this requires some finesse fishing with your crank baits. Crank baits as we all know have very sharp treble hooks and in order to pull a crank bait through stumps you have to pull the bait with finesse, using the tip of your rod to control how the bait bumps the stumps. A slight movement from 3 o’clock to 12 o’clock has an enormous effective on the movement of the crank bait, it changes the baits depth, and the position the treble hooks run as well as the speed of the bait.

If the stumps are deeper like 5 to 7 feet there is no better bait than rattle bait. You can work rattle baits in deeper stumps by working them over the cover and letting them drop into the areas between the stumps. All you do is stop the retrieve momentarily and the bait will drop. Then with just some careful tip control you can do this without hooking the stumps, and have a very effective bait to fish in this hard cover. When the stumps are in that 4 to 6 feet of depth and not showing over the top of the water a rattle bait is just ideal. The retrieve after the drop is sharp and quick that allows the rattle bait to run nose down and pop over the stumps without hanging up. If the nose of the rattle bait hangs lower than the rear treble hook the bait will easily bump and come over a stump. This is one time that I do not increase the size of the rear treble hook, I want it to run nose down and sometimes with an increased size rear treble it will not do so. However it is a good time to increase the size of the front treble this just by pure dynamics weights the front and the nose runs lower than the rear. Sometimes I just put weighted tape on the nose so it lies nose down without ever changing any hooks.

When the stumps are shallower or the tops show above the water working a shallow running crank bait is just the ticket. The challenge here is to bump the stumps with the nose of the bait without hanging up. You can accomplish this by holding the rod tip at or about 3 o’clock and when you feel it start to grab the stumps just raise the rod tip to 12 o’clock, this lifts the crank bait over the stumps in a nice constant retrieving motion. This again is finesse fishing with a crank bait so work it slowly retrieve it at a steady rate and use the tip to control the crank bait in and around the stumps.

There are several companies that make crank baits that will work in this situation; all you need is a crank bait that rises slowly and has curved or round lips, as they bounce off the stumps or rise over them with very little effort. Some crank-baits have more lift or more buoyancy than others, finding an effective crank-bait in this situation is the key. Experiment with your crank baits you will find that the ones that lift the fastest when stopped catch more fish in this situation and are easily worked through stumps. This technique is very effective in catching fish for a couple of reasons, the first being most people don’t do this and the other is in stumps its just a different look than most people fish, so you have a bait that presents itself differently than they are use to. No doubt that this is different but if you become an efficient stump fishermen with crank baits you will reap the benefits others haven’t been able to.

It’s a great time to fish stumps, come fish with me, I’ll teach you this technique!