Terry Madewell/Clarendon Citizen
It’s time to beat the heat by fishing at night
With the summer heat bearing down these days, and I do mean bearing and burning down, it can be difficult to spend a whole day on the lake fishing without risking heat issues. While several species of fish continue to be caught in good numbers and sizes, a lot of the guides and hardcore anglers have resorted to fishing at night.
But there’s more than one way to catch a fish at night.
The nocturnal hours certainly have a lot going for them right now. One, it’s simply just cooler and more comfortable to spend several hours on the water. At this time of the year, the fish are often schooled up or congregated in relatively small areas but in big numbers. Thus, it may take a longer to find these more isolated areas of high fish concentrations. This is true with most of the species of fish including largemouth bass, crappie, catfish and even bream and shellcracker.
One way to work the process by fishing at night is to have the fish come to you. Fishing at night under the lights is a great technique and one that has been around for a long time. Years ago fishermen sued the Coleman lanterns filled with gas to attract baitfish, which would in turn attract gamefish to the area. That put them around your boat where you could catch the fish by fishing straight under the boat with live bait or jigs.
That process holds true today but the lighting systems have gotten much more efficient at congregating baitfish. Perhaps the best I’ve seen to date was the ones used on a recent trip with Jay Bruce and Carolyn Reeves. They are strong believers in the Hydro Glow lights and based on the quantity of shad that we attracted to our anchored boat, the lights are truly amazing.
Bruce and Reeves are tournament crappie anglers who work hard at winning crappie tournaments. But when not fishing tournaments they do another thing they love to do and that’s just go crappie fishing for fun. At this time of the year, one of the most productive and relaxing ways to do that is to fish at night with Hydro Glow lights.
“Getting what you pay for is certainly true when it comes to fishing equipment,” Bruce said. “Without a doubt the Hydro Glow lights are the best I’ve ever used in terms of pulling in lots of shad as well as gamefish, and I’ve used about all of them. We’ll fish lakes all around the south and when we fish at night during the summer we make some of the biggest catches of the year. Plus, in most lakes, you can catch a variety of species of fish, not just crappie.”
Carolyn said that getting lots of forage fish, particularly threadfin shad, into the area quickly and keeping them there is a key to nocturnal fishing success under the lights.
“The baitfish draw the crappie, perch, catfish, largemouth and stripers to the lights and use simply use shiner minnows at a variety of depths below the lights to catch the fish,” she said. “The key is to place the minnows or live bait at different depths until you determine the preference for the fish. Even then you need to keep experimenting because the depth preference will change as the night progresses.”
That was certainly the case with us. The shad begin coming to the lights quickly and at first the fish were biting near the bottom, but before long there were so many shad circling the lights, the best depth to fish was considerably shallower.
“One of the biggest mistakes fishermen make when night fishing is fishing too deep at times,” Bruce said. “Usually I’ll try to anchor in 20-to-30-feet of water, and fishermen have tendency to just fish off the bottom by a foot or two. That’s a great place to start the process, but often we’ll end up catching most of the fish we catch in 10-feet or even less of water. When the baitfish really gets in tight and thick, the gamefish will move up to feed on them and that’s where you want your bait.
Bruce said that where you anchor the boat is also critical.
“You certainly want to anchor in an area where you know crappies are located, but you do not need to set up over a big brushpile. Once it gets dark, the fish will began to move about foraging. If you set up on a ledge, drop or hump with the Hydro Glow lights, it gives the fish a natural place to orient to. Having the bait congregated in big numbers makes the process simple. It is as simple as if you have the bait concentrated, the game fish will come.”
It worked for us. We fished up about 16 dozen minnows, which certainly meant the action was consistent and at times rather fast and furious.
If you haven’t tried it yet, give night fishing under the lights a try. The fishing will remain good all summer and it’s a great way to beat the heat and catch a boatload of fish. For more information on the amazing Hydro Glow lights for night fishing visit their website at www.hydroglow.com or call toll free 877-895-4569.
