Once the temperature reaches 90 plus in the daytime and stays that way for several days or weeks, we have a change in fish habits known as the dog days of summer. Once this happens, fish become much harder to catch and sometimes almost impossible, of course you will still catch a few if you are out early in the morning or late in the evening. Many of us though are not at the lake at these times and would still like a few good fish for our trouble. I for one have always felt a bad day of fishing was still worth the effort, you never know when that next fish will strike.

To improve our chances we need to change the way we fish. First we will need to fish much deeper than maybe we are used to, as fish tend to go to cooler water at this time of the season. Even with fish finding equipment they still can be stubborn to catch. The one thing that will up your chances will be to cover more water. Once you find a place you like, you will need to put on a little more weight to get your fishing lure or bait down to where the fish are, say 20 feet or more. Now you will want to try several lures and keep changing until something works. Crawfish lures work good in this type of fishing. Try moving the lure slowly over the bottom and be sure you give each lure you choose at least 20 minutes or more and change your retrieve speed a little every few minutes. Be sure to fish the deep drop offs and any channels you might know of. You might picture yourself down in the deep cool water and feeling a little lazy, you probably would not want to put out a lot of effort , so keep the lure moving and work along the deep drop offs until you wake them up. The hard part is waiting for the fish to strike. Bass and walleye are the hardest to catch at this time of year, but they will respond if you keep changing lures and locations. It only takes one good fish to keep us out there. Another thing you can try is deep trolling; you will want a deep running lure for this, maybe a deep running minnow, these work great most of the time. Be sure to change colors from time to time as well, darker colors for sunny days and brighter colors for gray days, with maybe a spinner on the lure. This will help the fish find your lure once you wake them up.

Always take plenty of sun screen, and plenty of refreshments with you, these two things will make a hard day of fishing much more enjoyable. After the water cools down in a few weeks we can all return to our top water fishing lures, where it seems sometimes the fish almost jump into the boat. Enjoy!