Surprising shallow bass

Buzzbaits around grass and flipping docks works for Rock Hill guide

With the mercury in the thermometer pegged above the 90-degree mark, Rusty White, a guide and tournament fisherman, is thrilled that he’s got Lake Wateree a short drive from his home in Rock Hill.

White, who hosts his own TV show, Fishing With Rusty, loves to fish shallow, and Wateree offers him that opportunity – at least it has this past week.

On Friday, he caught a handful of bass on buzzbaits around grass beds early in the morning, then ran into another half-dozen or so fish around boat docks.

“Wateree always has some shallow fish,” said White (803-230-1906). “It is known for having a lot of resident shallow fish. Bass will stay in that grass all summer.”

White likes to fish a handful of the beds of the canary reed grass and water willow that lines a great deal of Wateree’s shoreline. He starts with a buzzbait, looking to get strikes from super-aggressive fish feeding in the early morning before water temperatures rise. He may stick with it several hours if he gets overcast skies; on a normal, sunny day, he abandons the grass after two hours.

He will normally try topwaters on rocky, main-lake points on the lower end of the lake, or he’ll turn to boat docks, flipping or pitching a big, Texas-rigged worm. If he can get a couple of bites, he can usually figure out a pattern – bass may be on point docks, on docks on a certain stretch of bank, on certain areas of a dock.

“If you know the lake, you can usually get five or six good bites around docks,” he said.