Can you bass fish at night

Crawling the jig and popping it across the bottom imitates crayfish coming out from beneath their rocky hides to feed at night. If bass are aggressively feeding on shad, switch to a swimming jig.

Under the right conditions, nothing turns on the bite, or builds more excitement, better than surface lures such as prop-baits, Jitterbugs, and buzzbaits.

A big bass smashing a topwater on a dead-calm summer night is what fishing dreams are made of. Moon and cloud cover should guide your lure color selection. On pitch-black nights with little to no moonlight, go with solid black, brown, or blue. Night fishing for bass is electric. Summer night fishing for big bass has long had a cult following in the South, where daytime temperatures routinely edge into three digits, rain-forest-like humidity drains even the most determined anglers and jet skis run rampant.

But the South is not the only place where nighttime bass fishing is productive. When the weather heats up, big bass everywhere await the cover of darkness to feed.

Scoring the big bite on bass after dark, however, demands a fresh angling perspective. Here are the strategies of three hard-core bass fishermen who prefer to fish by moonlight. Christian has introduced hundreds of clients to the mysterious world of nighttime bass fishing in his year career. His preferred after-dark structure for both largemouths and smallmouths is the offshore hump. In hot weather, schools of threadfin shad spend their days gathered around main-lake channel structure that may be in water 40 or 50 feet deep, Christian says.

To intercept the baitfish, bass suspend off long points in this deep water, conserving energy while waiting for forage to happen by. But at night, a different scenario unfolds. Many of these bass slide up onto nearby humps to hunt for crayfish, which emerge in the dark to feed.

Fishing a hump at night requires stealth. He makes a long cast with a bottom-bumping crawdad imitator like a jig with a pork-frog trailer to the top of the hump. At night he uses the reel handle more than the rod to move the lure, so that the jig maintains contact with the bottom as much as possible. People always say that summer is the time to night fish but I disagree. If I had one time of year to fish at night it would be November through mid December.

That time is right around the corner! If you have never tried night fishing for bass, don't put it off any longer. But for me it boils down to a few thoughts. When the fishing is good during the day it will be good at night. That's it. Use the exact same criteria for deciding when to fish at night than you do to decide what will be a better day to fish. If you want to catch big fish at night fish during big fish seasons late fall through early spring on very good weather periods falling barometer.

If you want to catch numbers of fish at night fish during the numbers season summer on good weather periods stable or falling barometer. Then there is the question of the moon. Of all types of fishing you'd expect night fishing would be most influenced by the moon. But in my experience the period of the moon plays virtually no role in the bite. Season and the weather trump the moon every time. That's not to say moonlight isn't important.

Think of the moon as a second sun. Moonrise and moonset can trigger a small increase of activity similar to, but not as strong as, dawn or dusk. I've also experienced this on a full moon when the moon was blocked out completely by clouds until about 2 a. The sudden appearance of the moon triggered the same kind of bite as a moonrise. Although I don't feel it effects the bite, choosing the right phase will make life easier for you. The moon phase will determine how much light you will have and at what part of night.

If you want moonlight early during the night fish around the first quarter. If you want moonlight late during the night fish around the third quarter. And, of course, fish the full moon for a bright moon all night, and a new moon for zero moonlight.

Finally, on a day-to-day basis, the best fishing will be at dawn and dusk, followed by night, followed by daytime. Some people think that the second half of the night is better than the first, but I haven't found this to be true.

The only situation where this could be the case would be if the water you're fishing get's heavy night fishing pressure during the first half of the night.

The quiet night brings fish out to primary structure that was too pressured to produce fish during the day. That beautiful rock pile that gets fished to death during the day can be a real hot spot at night. The cover of darkness also brings fish up shallower than they would be during the day. It's not uncommon to find fish in only a few feet of water against the bank flushing out bait fish. During the summer these fish can be easily caught with shallow running crankbaits or topwater lures.

During the colder months there can also be a shallow night bite. But this time for huge fish on jigs, spinnerbaits, and swimbaits. In general, fish the same areas at night that you are finding fish during the day. Bass won't move long distances just for the night. As a general rule, use lures that are bulky and dark.

I feel that spinnerbaits are the "perfect" night fishing bait. They can be fished at any depth, in most cover, and appeal to inactive fish at night. And, most of all, the vibration makes it easy for fish to find spinnerbaits in the dark water.

The standard night fishing spinnerbait that you will see in stores is a black bait with a large single "black nickel" Colorado blade. This is a good blade, but I prefer something slightly different. I retrieve spinnerbaits slowly along the bottom. Wait for the bait to hit bottom and then begin a retrieve just fast enough to keep the blades turning. If you lose contact of the bottom stop and let the spinnerbait sink back down. Another effective night time retrieve is a lift and drop.

This works best with the standard single Colorado night blade. As the spinnerbait sinks after the cast you will be able to feel the single blade thumping. Be alert for bites on the sink. After it hits bottom make a few quick cranks with your reel then let it helicopter back to the bottom.

Which begs the question for anglers new to night fishing… how in the world do I catch fish at night without lights? Well, funny you should ask. Here are three baits to try in the dark. A big Colorado blade spinnerbait is probably the most popular lure of all for night fishing.

A Colorado blade works well at night for the same reason it does in muddy water. The vibration generated by the heavy thump of a Colorado blade spinning in the water turns the bait into a homing beacon capable of drawing bass in through the dark waters. Something that has never really made sense to me but has been proven time and time again, is that black is the most effective color at night. When in doubt, black it out. We even buy spinnerbaits with black blades to match the skirt. As contrary as it seems to my common sense, black shows up the best to bass in the dark.

As for fishing a spinnerbait at night, you basically just want to look for the same areas where you would anticipate the fish being during the day.

The cover of night allows you to throw a bigger bait, which is actually more effective at times to draw a bigger strike from the school at night than you could finesse up during the day. Definitely still in the top-three night bite producers of all time, the buzzbait is another perfect bait to fish in the dark. For one, it takes a lot of the guess work out of it.