Tips for focusing on Largemouth

[Snakebit95]

Most of the large lakes / reservoirs near me are heavy populated with spotted bass, with a lesser amount of largemouth. I would be interested in hearing other angler's strategies for locating the largemouth bass in these situations. Most of the tournaments I attend seem to end with a winner that finds a largemouth for a kicker fish. My plans are to begin focusing on how to isolate / find these largemouth; probably requiring a change in my way of fishing / thinking. I would love to hear proven methods for locating them.

[BigBass94]

I would say just throw bigger baits and go shallower.

[DrewFlu33]

Haven't done a lot of fishing around spots since moving to Minnesota, but when I grew up fishing around them I always remember it being tough to find the largemouth after you found the spots. It wasn't necessarily a matter of finding the largemouth. Instead I think it was because it's really tough to convince yourself that you need to leave an area when you're catching a bunch of fish. I'm sure it's different in Alabama than in WV, but eventually I learned that catching 12-13 inch fish all day wasn't going to get me anywhere.

The main thing I found was just to LEAVE. Go somewhere else where you're not catching a little spot on every piece of wood...or whatever the case may be.

[Aric11]

My suggestion would be to figure out what the larger sized forage base is in the lake (perch, gills, large shad etc) then use bigger baits like Spooks, 5” Swimbaits, 6XD’s etc and match the hatch. If like you say the winning bags are only anchored by a big LM or two, then you want to only target them with BF specific baits.

It probably makes no sense to target them all day during the tournament if the numbers aren’t there. So you will want to spend a practice day or two or three and only target LM so you can try and develop a pattern of when they feed most frequently. Then you can capitalize on those time slots tournament day targeting them.

[John Jackson]

Most of the lakes I fish have both. (Lanier, Russell, Hartwell)
To target largemouths, it's about location more than anything else. Go way up the main rivers, and go to the backs of down lake creeks that have decent water flow. Then fish mainly like you would in an all largemouth lake. I do well in tourneys and usually get one or two kickers doing this.
Depending on time of year, I may get a limit of spots first, then go kicker hunting. In colder weather, I spend all day for largemouths.

[J Risco]

Most of the lakes I fish have both. (Lanier, Russell, Hartwell)
To target largemouths, it's about location more than anything else. Go way up the main rivers, and go to the backs of down lake creeks that have decent water flow. Then fish mainly like you would in an all largemouth lake. I do well in tourneys and usually get one or two kickers doing this.
Depending on time of year, I may get a limit of spots first, then go kicker hunting. In colder weather, I spend all day for largemouths.

Very good advice. I used to do this on Lake Allatoona and most times would come in with at least a couple LM, which almost always help a bag of spots unless you are catching some magnum sized spots

[Snakebit95]

Very good advice. I used to do this on Lake Allatoona and most times would come in with at least a couple LM, which almost always help a bag of spots unless you are catching some magnum sized spots

The tournament I fished last week, I had 5 nice spots in the livewell by 10am. I probably stopped spot fishing around 11 and started jig fishing shallow water trees and brush in hopes of finding a kicker LM. Most of the brush and trees were in 3-4 FT of water. I ended up catching a few more spots, but no LM. Top 3 showed up at the scales with LM, and I ended up in 4th with a good bag of spots. Everybody below me had a smaller bag of spots. It was enough to show me that it will take 1-2 good LM to win a tournament on Martin. I spoke to the winner for a few minutes, and he said both of his LM were caught in less than 12" of water, which was way shallower than I was fishing. Is this typical for LM to be in this shallow of water? Always thought they were rather shy of daylight and would seek cover in a bit deeper water during the peak of the day.

[J Risco]

The tournament I fished last week, I had 5 nice spots in the livewell by 10am. I probably stopped spot fishing around 11 and started jig fishing shallow water trees and brush in hopes of finding a kicker LM. Most of the brush and trees were in 3-4 FT of water. I ended up catching a few more spots, but no LM. Top 3 showed up at the scales with LM, and I ended up in 4th with a good bag of spots. Everybody below me had a smaller bag of spots. It was enough to show me that it will take 1-2 good LM to win a tournament on Martin. I spoke to the winner for a few minutes, and he said both of his LM were caught in less than 12" of water, which was way shallower than I was fishing. Is this typical for LM to be in this shallow of water? Always thought they were rather shy of daylight and would seek cover in a bit deeper water during the peak of the day.

Sometimes I would target the LM first thing in the AM if they were biting better early at that time of year, then move to the offshore/deeper spots later to fill a limit.

[Aric11]

The tournament I fished last week, I had 5 nice spots in the livewell by 10am. I probably stopped spot fishing around 11 and started jig fishing shallow water trees and brush in hopes of finding a kicker LM. Most of the brush and trees were in 3-4 FT of water. I ended up catching a few more spots, but no LM. Top 3 showed up at the scales with LM, and I ended up in 4th with a good bag of spots. Everybody below me had a smaller bag of spots. It was enough to show me that it will take 1-2 good LM to win a tournament on Martin. I spoke to the winner for a few minutes, and he said both of his LM were caught in less than 12" of water, which was way shallower than I was fishing. Is this typical for LM to be in this shallow of water? Always thought they were rather shy of daylight and would seek cover in a bit deeper water during the peak of the day.

This time of year absolutely! But timing is everything. They will move up shallow like that at the warmest parts of the day. With the colder water the shallowest parts of any lake will warm the quickest during a warming trend or high noon. So it makes perfect sense to me that's where he found them.

[autigerbass]

Most of the lakes I fish have both. (Lanier, Russell, Hartwell)
To target largemouths, it's about location more than anything else. Go way up the main rivers, and go to the backs of down lake creeks that have decent water flow. Then fish mainly like you would in an all largemouth lake. I do well in tourneys and usually get one or two kickers doing this.
Depending on time of year, I may get a limit of spots first, then go kicker hunting. In colder weather, I spend all day for largemouths.

Agree with this. If you are fishing the clear, highland reservoir lakes in AL (Smith, Martin, Wedowee) and you want to target LMs specifically you should probably focus on going up the rivers.

[John Jackson]

The tournament I fished last week, I had 5 nice spots in the livewell by 10am. I probably stopped spot fishing around 11 and started jig fishing shallow water trees and brush in hopes of finding a kicker LM. Most of the brush and trees were in 3-4 FT of water. I ended up catching a few more spots, but no LM. Top 3 showed up at the scales with LM, and I ended up in 4th with a good bag of spots. Everybody below me had a smaller bag of spots. It was enough to show me that it will take 1-2 good LM to win a tournament on Martin. I spoke to the winner for a few minutes, and he said both of his LM were caught in less than 12" of water, which was way shallower than I was fishing. Is this typical for LM to be in this shallow of water? Always thought they were rather shy of daylight and would seek cover in a bit deeper water during the peak of the day.

I rarely use a jig as it doesn't cover enough water for me. They catch good fish, but I believe bass get shallow to feed, and the more water I can cover with reaction baits, the more good fish have a chance to bite. It works for me. On Lanier you also usually need at least 2 kickers, and sometimes 3, to win.