Brushpile Bass

Fishing guide Roger Bacon turned me onto some outstanding brush fishing for bass by accident back in the summer of 2000.

“Bass love brushpiles,” Bacon said.

Bacon said anglers not familiar with brush pile locations should search the open lake and large coves, looking for submerged marker buoys covered with green slime.

“These are the ones some of the old-school, hard-core crappie anglers put out and they usually hold plenty of fish,” he said.

Some of these brush piles can be quite large, and there is much structure to cover. Anglers should stick with the main brush and not worry about the smaller piles on the outside. Most of the bass tend to stick around the main brush, and if anglers are baiting the brush for other species, they usually do, so on the main pile because it is easier to position a boat over. This will draw in baitfish, which in turn draws in bass.

Brush pile bass are famous for biting at specific depth when they get choosy, say 14 feet, and ignoring anything they have to move very far to ingest. That is why boat positioning is such an important part of brush pile fishing. If you get right over brush and put down a drop shot rig or run a deep-diving crankbait by your chances improve dramatically.

Chester Moore