From ICAST to 22 Pounds of Bass – On The Water

Nothing excites me more than traveling to new places to fish in the northeast and fishing a jig in deep water. When a buddy texted me that he was catching big fish out deep on jigs in southern Maine, my friends and I couldn’t get to the lake fast enough to give it a shot.

We arrived on Friday to find ideal conditions for hunting bass in the middle of the lake as it was calm, quiet, blue-bird skies and only two other boats on the lake. I spent the first 15 minutes of the day idling around using my side-imaging sonar and traditional 2D sonar to find submerged vegetation and a variety of hard structure, knowing the bass would be holding closer to one or the other. With the surface temperature pushing 80 degrees, I could see that the bass and bait fish had definitely moved offshore to the deeper and cooler water, and they were positioned tight to the bottom around the vegetation.

Once I found an area that had an extensive amount of both vegetation and schools of baitfish, we went to work casting our jigs out, and got on them immediately. The trick for the day was to use forward facing sonar to place our Beast Coast Fishing Vanquish tungsten jigs as close to the thickest patches of vegetation as possible and twitch it vigorously without causing too much forward movement. When we found a school of baitfish close to the vegetation and cast our jigs between the two, we would catch a fish almost every time!

The most productive depths were 12 to 15 feet, adjacent to deeper water that maxed out at 20 feet. While it was a good day for both smallmouth and largemouth bass, the largemouth dominated, with two over 4 pounds and two over 5 pounds hitting the deck, with the biggest going 5.19 pounds!

» Follow Sean on IG @reelnorthernbass

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