Smallmouth summer patterns, dissecting sandgrass and locating fish.

Lake locations
Many lakes with sand grass rear healthy populations of smallmouths, and fish in these waters quickly adapt with the available habitat for spawning, feeding and homing. Sandgrass is unique in that it grows in deeper water more than any other aquatic plant and often is the only deep-water cover available in lakes.

The peak growth of sand grass is in summer when sunlight penetration is at its greatest. The sand grass pattern begins to take shape in midsummer (late June, earliest) as fish have begun their post-spawn feeding activities and movements and surface temperatures have surpassed 70 degrees.

The sand grass bite is fully established now in July and during the summer peak when thermoclines typically form on some lakes, driving smallmouths to seek deeper, cooler depths with structure and cover. These mid-depth ranges of 15 to 25 feet is where the lake’s water temperature is the coolest, the oxygen content is the richest and the habitat is mostly sand grass. Smallmouths and other species gravitate to these locations with many remaining there through fall.

While sandgrass can blanket the entire lake bottom, finding smallmouths on their expansive beds can be difficult. Larges and grass flats will scatter smallies throughout, but thicker clumps with unique features that grow upward into the water column and specific spots differentiating from most other areas of the bed are best. Open pockets in between clumps and grass beds are high-percentage locations too, providing smallmouths with ambush points.

Without scanning, little in terms of sand grass consistency, depth range, size of the clump and its attractiveness and propensity to hold forage and smallmouths, can be deciphered. Charting with Navionics and scanning a lake’s basin and using side imaging and a chirp sonar is huge for this precision-fishing strategy. These tools tell you about a specific region, and if it’s a grass bed or not. MWO

For more on fishing smallmouth bass in the summer, check out the July issue of MidWest Outdoors magazine, available now at a newsstand near you. You may also subscribe to MidWest Outdoors online or by phoning 800-606-3474.