By Captain Jake Davis:
When it comes to bass fishing destinations, northeast Alabama’s Lake Guntersville ranks in the top five for bass fisheries nationwide. Depending on what you’re looking for, it may be the best.
This sprawling impoundment of the Tennessee River is famous for its grass. Vast mats of floating and submerged vegetation make a perfect bass habitat, and they are also a ton of fun to fish. Guntersville is about an hour and a half from Birmingham, and it is the place to go if you’re looking for big largemouth bass and lots of them. Tournament anglers weigh in five-fish limits of 30 pounds on a pretty regular basis at “The Big G.” If you do the math, that’s a 6-pound average per fish.
On a recent trip, Guntersville guide Jake Davis was looking forward to a fantastic summer. We were throwing big swimbaits, jigs and creature baits to humps and points outside of spawning areas, but that bite will be done by the time you read this. By June, the postspawn activity should be wrapped up and bass should be moving into their summer patterns. On Guntersville, summer offers some of the best fishing of the year if you can stand the heat. Some fish will be schooled up on deep ledges, where they can be targeted with crankbaits, soft plastics, and jigs. Others will be tucked up under the edges of the grass.
Davis said Guntersville’s grass mats provide shade. The water temperatures beneath them are cooler than open water. As a result, largemouth bass are concentrated relatively shallow under the mats and also remain active. Punching heavy baits through these mats is a bite Guntersville is famous for in late summer, but this time of year baitfish and bass will be schooled up, and mayflies will be hatching. All this leads to awesome fishing as well as some explosive topwater action when conditions are right.
Guntersville is well known for topwater fishing, especially for the size of fish that attack baits on top. There’s nothing more exciting than a big slob of a bass opening the water beneath your bait like a flushing toilet. The fall frog/rat bite on the grass mats at Guntersville is legendary, but summer topwater action is also fantastic. And while topwater might not produce the consistent action of fishing deeper, it is a good way to target bigger fish.
All this information passed in conversation as we twitched Tightline jigs and Missile Baits D Bombs across a shell bed. But conversation came to a halt when I felt a thump down the shaft of one of Davis’ Duckett rods and set the hook. Upon the netting of a solid 6-pound Guntersville largemouth, I understood why this reservoir, with its beautiful backdrop of rolling mountains, captures the imaginations of so many bass anglers. And the bite will only get better through the summer and into the fall.
Capt. Jake Davis is a USCG Licensed fishing guide on Lake Guntersville, Tims Ford Lake, and Nickajack Lake. Contact him at (615) 613-2382 or msbassguide@comcast.net.