Get Crankin’ at Kerr

The late bass postspawn is a favorite time for David Fritts and Joel Richardson at N.C.’s biggest reservoir.

If anyone knows more about catching bass at John H. Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island) Lake than David Fritts of Lexington or Joel Richardson of Kernersville, they’re doing a good job of keeping it a secret.Fritts, who won the 1993 BASS Masters Classic, and Richardson, a veteran bass pro and guide, probably have derricked as many bass — and as many quality fish — out of Kerr Lake as anyone else during the past 10 or 12 years. They are uniquely qualified to teach a “Kerr Lake 101” course, especially in “summer school.”

They understand what it takes to put bass in the boat during the cold winter and hot summer months. They also know how to target big fish when they need to and numbers when they need to. And make no mistake about it, they can catch ’em — and July is right down their power alleys, like a belt-high fastball to Barry Bonds.

“Basically, the first part of July is the best time to fish structure at Buggs Island for catching numbers of fish,” said Fritts, who has won numerous tournaments at the 49,500-acre reservoir during local, regional and national events. “The first and second weeks of July are probably the best two weeks of the year to fish Buggs Island, if you like catching ‘structure’ fish. It’s the time when you can pull up on a place and catch a limit.

“For one thing, they’re done spawning; they’re hungry; and as they leave shallow water, the first good drop they come to that’s got bait on it, they’ll stay there and feed.”

Richardson, who keeps a cottage near Clarksville, Va., and has guided at the lake for the past 12 years, is also a nationally-ranked fisherman who has won at the prestigious FLW Tour circuit and regularly qualifies for that trail’s national championship. He agrees with Fritts that July is a great month.

“The first two or three weeks of July are the best,” he said. “July 4 is usually a dynamite weekend. (Bass) are usually ganged up.

“It’s the time of year you can pull up on six or seven places and catch nothing, then pull up on a spot and catch a dozen or more. Not that the other places weren’t good, but the fish didn’t happen to be up feeding when you were there.”

June and July are the big feeding months at Kerr Lake, which by virtue of its position on the Virginia-North Carolina border, usually lags three weeks to a month behind other reservoirs when it comes to the timing of the spawn and when bass recover from it.

It usually takes bass at Kerr Lake until late June or early July before they really get out of their spotty postspawn period and start to feed up before heading to deep water for the summer.

An hour to the south, the bass at Falls of Neuse, Shearon Harris and Jordan lakes are usually on their summer patterns by the end of June. Ditto High Rock Lake at the Yadkin River system, and at Lake Wylie near Charlotte at the Catawba River chain, they’re out by mid-June.

That’s what makes Kerr Lake so special for so many fishermen. It’s the last place where you can catch bass, in good numbers and sizes, before they scatter out into deeper water.

Fritts is strictly an open-water, structure fisherman. The first thing he looks for are places where bass might stop on their trip to deep water to splurge for a couple of weeks.

“It’s pretty typical of most lakes,” he said. “The fish are going to be schooled up, on sharp breaks and where the big dropoffs are — creek bends, river bends, road beds, long and flat points that drop off on the ends.

“The thing about Buggs Island is you’ve got to figure out where the fish are biting. It could be in Nutbush Creek — which is a lake in itself — or it could be on the lower end around Palmer Point, or the middle lake in the Ivy Hill area, or they could be biting in Grassy Creek or up the river.

“It’s hit and miss; you never know. A lot of times I’ve been up there and thought I’d win a tournament in Nutbush, then wind up in Grassy or Ivy Hill, Bluestone.

“You just have to figure out where they’re biting, and that’s the biggest problem at Buggs Island because it’s so huge, so massive. To fish that whole lake, it would take you two weeks just to hit all the high spots.”

The first thing Fritts looks for in July is deep water. The bass won’t be in it, but they won’t be far from it when they move in to feed.

“There are a few late spawners, a few fish that are still in the headwaters in creeks, but there usually aren’t enough there to win a tournament,” Fritts said. “In July you really want to concentrate on the area from midway back in the creeks on out to the main lake. That’s a pretty good rule of thumb for finding large concentrations of fish.

“The main-lake and main-river stuff can be great, especially the way it is now where they’re moving a lot of water. That can get the main-lake stuff really going good.”

Fritts looks for fish in 10 to 12 feet of water early during July, then moves deeper as the month progresses. By the first of August, if it’s an extremely hot summer, bass could be out in 20 or 25 feet of water, but that’s unusual. Putting a good limit in your livewell is a matter of putting the right depth together with the right kind of offshore structure.

“Once you get out in one of the creeks, you’ve got to start looking for sharp contour breaks; that’s what throws a lot of people off,” he said. “You’re fishing contour breaks, not the creek-channel drops, because the channels may be 50 or 60 feet deep.

“You want to fish where there’s a good, vertical break, and you want to be looking for a sharp break more toward the end of the month. After all the good dropoffs start getting beat on pretty good, you have to start looking for good contour drops where you might get a
5- or 10-foot vertical drop at a spot.”

Day in and day out, Fritts puts more trust in Nutbush Creek than any of Kerr Lake’s other tributaries. It’s the biggest creek in the watershed, and even though it gets pounded pretty good, Fritts said it can take the extra pressure because of the number of fish that are released at tournament weigh-ins in the creek — either at the Henderson Point access area, the Hibernia area of the Satterwhite Point area.

“I wish I could say you can go in Eastland and catch a limit, but Nutbush is really hard to beat for numbers,” he said. “If it comes down to needed to catch a big fish, I’d say it’s Bluestone or Grassy (creeks). If you don’t need to catch a lot of fish, just a big fish, they I’ve caught them a lot of the time in Bluestone. It’s out of the way — it’s a little extra run to get there — but a lot of times if you need that 6- or 7-pounder, the one you need will be in there.”

Richardson loves to catch fish in deep water, and he said most of his bigger fish come from those 12- to 17-foot depths.

“This is the time of year when you can catch fish in both places — creeks and main-lake areas,” he said. “I like to fish the major creek channels around the mouth of smaller creeks like Dodson and Mill Creek in there around Satterwhite Point.

“I’ve got a little rule. If there’s 35 to 40 feet of water around, bass don’t have to keep moving out to find deep water; they’ll have plenty. I think they usually hold around 22 feet deep, then move up to feed. It’s a rare time when I fish deeper than 22 feet at Buggs — maybe on in the winter, when there’s no thermocline set up.

“One thing I like to do is, as soon as I put my boat in the water, I like to run around and use my depth-finder to find out what depth the baitfish are located. That will give me a good idea about how deep to fish on the humps and points I like to fish, because the bass will be within 3 or 4 feet of the depth where the baitfish are using. Then, I’ll start looking with my depth-finder (a Lowrance X-71 or LMS-240), looking for stuff on those places — brush and stumps — where the bass will be holding.”

Once he puts baitfish and cover together on the right kind of structure, Richardson said half the fight is over. Now you just have to cast and catch ’em.

Fritts sticks almost exclusively to a deep-diving crankbait if he finds bass in range. His favorite is the Rapala DT-16 he designed, and his favorite colors are blues and shads — or other combinations.

“Actually, in July the color (Rapala) calls blue shad (pearl with a blue back) or plain shad (pearl with a green back),” he said. “Those are my two choices unless you get a lot of color in the water, and Hot Tiger (chartreuse with green stripes/green back) can be good later in July.

“I’ll fish them on 10-pound Rapala (monofilament) as long as I can get by with it. And (American Rodsmith) has designed a 7-foot, 11-inch rod, a collapsible glass rod, that can give you an extra 5 to 8 yards a cast, which is important.”

Richardson likes deep-diving crankbaits also, his favorites being a Fat Free Shad or Lohr’s Big Jerry in shad and chartreuse patterns. But he’s quick to Texas-rig — and occasionally Carolina-rig — a big worm, specifically a 10-1/2-inch Zoom Ol’ Monster in black sapphire, to probe the depths.

“It’s good for fishing heavy cover, and it seems like, in July, the fish like a big bait,” he said. “I’ve been there when they wouldn’t touch a 6- or 7-inch worm, but you throw in an Ol’ Monster, and they’ll eat it.

Another lure Richardson really likes is a Zoom Fluke, a soft-plastic jerkbait. He uses it early in the morning to try and get a quick limit of bass before the sun really warms the shallows and sends bass packing.

“I always look for a topwater bite early in the morning; that’s my first priority,” he said. “Fish will be around rip-rap or rocky points, tight to the bank. You’re trying to catch the aggressive fish that are up shallow, roaming and picking off minnows. But they’ll stay close to deep water.

“I’ll fish topwater from, say, daylight to 9:30 a.m. You can have a good topwater bite when it’s calm — and that time of year there’s usually hardly any breeze — but if you can find water with a little ripple on it, that will enhance the topwater bite.”

Richardson fishes the Fluke or Super Fluke in either natural shad or albino colors, on a 6-foot Shimano rod, a Cronarch reel and 14-pound-test Berkeley XL monofilament. He rigs the Fluke weedless on a 4/0 Daiichi wide-gap hook, and he casts and works the bait with the rod tip, on top or just below the surface in short jerks.

“You’ll see the fish come and get the bait, and if they’re real aggressive, you can set the hook immediately because they’ll inhale it,” Richardson said. “Sometimes you can catch three or four fish at one little point, then go to the next point and catch another.

“A lot of times, I’ve had a limit before I went to deep water, and even though your bigger fish usually come from deeper water, it’s good to get a limit early, especially in a tournament.”