As water temps near the boiling point, or get as near as they will anyway, a beautiful and largely ignored phenomenom occurs – fish show up shallow in droves. During the heat of the summer, hungry bass gather together and scour the shallow shorelines of many lakes around the country in what are referred to as “wolf packs”.
Some bass stay shallow year round and others move to deep water after the annual spring spawn in search of bait in cooler waters where they can recover. A subset of those bass, however, will return shallow before the rest return in the fall. Those fish will gang up with the resident shallow fish in little groups of two or sometimes bigger schools of more than 20. These wolf packs will slowly cruise the shorelines looking closely for baitfish of all kinds, but it seems they prefer sunfish the most.
These fish are often big and extremely aggressive. Their aggressiveness is a direct result of their close proximity to other big and aggressive bass. I’ve seen them so aggressive when running together like this that you could literally throw a stick in the water and they would fight over it.
So catching them should be easy, right? Well, sometimes.
The great thing about this style of fishing is that the bass are grouped up. The problem with this style of fishing is also that the bass are grouped up. So essentially, you’re faced with a lot of dead water. Instead of seeing a fish or two in each pocket, you may fish several pockets with the trolling motor on high before you see a single bass. But when you do, it won’t be a single bass.
This means that when you do get an opportunity, you’ve got to capitalize on it. The two most important factors when fishing for wolf packing bass are seeing them before they see you and having the right setup when you do.