Summer Bass On Lake Weiss With Aaron Otting

“I’ve fished all over the United States and in Mexico, but Lake Weiss is the best bass lake that I know of.”

Aaron Otting of Cartersville ought to know a good bass lake when he fishes one. During the 36 years that he was in the sporting goods business and the owner of Sportsman’s Supply in Cartersville, he made sure there was plenty of time for tournament fishing. Now retired, Aaron spends most of his time at his home on Lake Weiss. July on Weiss, Aaron said, is one of the best months of the year for bass fishermen, and on June 4 Aaron took me fishing to show me his July technique.

Lake Weiss is widely known as an extremely shallow lake. If you can find 30 feet of water on your depth finder, you are sitting above some of the deepest water in the lake. The bass don’t have much cool, deep water to dive for when water temperatures soar (it was already up to 86 degrees on the day we fished). Though dredging channel ledges with a DB3 or dragging a Carolina-rigged lizard is a good summertime technique on Weiss, a surprising number of bass hang out in shallow grass beds and in thin water in the shade of boat docks. To get these fish, Aaron opts for his flippin’ stick.

Since the waters of Weiss are seldom “crystal” clear, flipping allows a fisherman to get right on top of the bass in grassbeds and under boat docks without spooking them. Pitching — the backhanded technique that allows you to throw a bait into tight cover but at a faster speed and longer distance than flipping — is effective, and Aaron pitches when the water is clear.

“If I can see my lure fall a foot, the water’s too clear and I’m too close,” Aaron said. “I need to back off and pitch.”

On the morning we fished, we launched Aaron’s Triton at his private ramp in a small creek between Water House and Tucker creeks, on the upper end of Lake Weiss. Our first strategy of the day was not flipping. Instead we tried a famous Weiss pattern: buzzbaits. We motored out into the Coosa River channel and began to fish log jams and long, shallow points with grass beds.

Before we began fishing, Aaron saw a sign he did not like. The light-green, almost white sections of the stems of the aquatic grass were showing above the water.

“That white stem tells me the water’s down, and the fish will have pulled back,” Aaron said. “They won’t be in the grass.”

That morning, the water on the long, shallow points in the mouth of Tucker Creek was calm. No fish were chasing the lake’s abundant populations of bait. Lake Weiss contains very dense populations of shad and other forage fish, and there is proof of this in a visible form: great blue herons. I have never seen a higher concentration of herons, along with egrets and other wading birds, in any place I have ever fished.

After 15 minutes of throwing buzzbaits with no bite, Aaron was discouraged. He predicted that the topwater bite would pick up, and if you go this month you should definitely start the day with this lure. If the lake is at full pool, look for grassy, shallow points, rip rap, and wood structure. Since the bass were not feeding in the grass, Aaron moved us onto an island in the mouth of Tucker Creek where the bank dropped off more quickly and there was wood structure instead of grass. Here, we picked up the only bass of the day that hit a buzzbait, a 10-inch fish that I caught just in front of a half-submerged log.

By 7:30, Aaron was ready to get out the flipping sticks.

I have always understood the basic idea behind “flipping,” but Aaron helped me fine-tune my technique. For the lesson, he loaned me one of his own rods, a 7-foot custom-built flipping stick built by Aaron’s friend and Lake Weiss neighbor, Jerry Watkins, who is a salesman for Zoom.

Aaron’s Abu Garcia reels were spooled with 20-lb. Berkeley Big Game line, in clear-blue color. The heavy line, Aaron said, is not so much a factor of the size of the fish as it is a factor of where he catches them: around dock pilings, out of Christmas trees, from under sunken timber. He builds his Texas rigs starting with a 1/8-oz. bullet sinker — and the size, Aaron said, is important.

“I want that worm to fall slow,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the strikes will be on the fall.”

Aaron ties on a 4/0 Gamakatsu straight-shank hook. We used Zoom U-tail worms in red shad on our flipping rigs. For Aaron, there are only two flipping patterns that he uses: a worm pattern and a jig ‘n pig pattern. He won’t switch to the jig ‘n pig in the summer until he starts catching bass that are spitting crawfish when they come up, usually in July. He uses a standard black/blue or black/brown jig with a brown or blue Zoom salty chunk trailer.

Under Aaron’s instruction, I picked up the mechanics of flipping fairly easily. What did not come as easily for me was the next part of Aaron’s technique. Once the worm hit the water beneath a dock, Aaron let it sink on a slack line. He did not tighten the line to feel the bottom. Instead, he kept a gentle curve or belly in the line, and he kept his eyes on the belly.

“To be a flipper, you’ve got to be a line watcher,” Aaron said. “That’s another reason I like heavier line and this blue color, line that I can see. I don’t ever like to feel a fish bite. I want to see him first.”

There are two reasons for this. First, dock-fishing in the summer is no secret pattern on Weiss, and these bass see plenty of baits. When a fish takes the worm in its mouth, and you tighten the line, you are telegraphing a message: you are about to have your tail fin jerked out through your lips. The bass knows how to respond to this information — it spits the bait. Secondly, when a bass picks up your bait and doesn’t get the sense that there is something attached to it, it usually has one instinctive response. It swims out of the cover and into deeper water.

Aaron demonstrated this to me twice not long after we had started flipping docks.

“Okay, look here,” he said. “See the line? I’m not going to set the hook yet, I want you to see where he goes with it.”

Both times that Aaron made a point of giving the fish some time and some slack, the line moved steadily away from the dock, toward and eventually under the boat. As soon as the line brushed against the hull of the boat, that tension was enough to alert the fish and it was gone when Aaron set the hook.

“That’s enough of that,” Aaron said after he missed the second fish of the morning. The next bass got its eyes crossed.

“If the line is loose, he doesn’t know you’re there,” Aaron said. “You can lead him out of the dock or brush-pile.”

Every bass we caught did the same thing: given slack, it headed away from the cover. Most of the time, the bass was heading straight toward the boat and was about to be directly under Aaron when he set the hook. With the stout rod and heavy line, the hook was usually driven straight up and completely through the thick, bony nose of the fish rather than through the corner of the mouth (you can see this in the photo on page 42). That kind of hookset doesn’t shake loose easily.

Like I said, keeping slack in the line was the difficult part of flipping for me. When I fish a Texas-rig, I usually keep the line tight so that I can feel the bottom, feel any brush, and feel the familiar tap-tap-tap of a taker. It took a while for me to drop the habit of trying to feel what was going on with the worm.

A Beginner’s Guide to Flipping Docks

Flipping is not difficult. Start with a long, stout baitcasting rod. If the rod tip is limber, you will have to exert more force with your arm to overcome the sag in the rod tip, and you want the flipping action to be as subtle as possible.

When you flip a bait, you gather extra line in the hand that is not holding the rod. This serves as the slack that will allow the bait to go somewhere when you flip it — with flipping, you are not casting with enough force to pull line from the spool. Some people grab the line between the reel and the first eye of the rod, but Aaron believes it is better to grab the line between the first and second eye. Doing so allows you to get a little more line in your hand. Also, any line coil that develops if you pay out too much line will not be in front of the reel, and you are less apt to reel a loop onto the spool.

To begin a cast, reach up and take the line between the first two eyes of the rod and pull it back toward you. You need to cast out enough line to begin with so that when you pull out the spare line, you still have several feet of line between the rod tip and the lure, about as much as or even a little more than the length of your rod. Lift the rod tip to swing the lure toward you, and then lower the rod tip to increase the speed of the lure as it moves away from you again. Finally, “flip” your wrist to turn the rod tip back up and give the bait a boost when it is in the bottom of its arc. This will send it on a course parallel to the surface of the water. As soon as you flip, release the spare line in you hand.

When flipping underneath a dock, position yourself five or six feet from the dock, about the length of your flippin’ stick, and try to hit the lower edge of the lowest board with the line just above your bait. As soon as the line hits the board, release the slack. When you get it right, the lure will continue on between the water and the dock and land, hopefully, in that dark hole where a lunker is waiting.

As soon as you cast, engage the reel. You can raise the rod tip to work the bait, and usually there is no need to reel in line. Just take up slack from the rod and cast again without ever freeing the spool.

By lunchtime, we had put five bass in the boat counting the fish that hit a buzzbait, with the biggest weighing two pounds, a chunky 16-inch fish. We had fished docks in Tucker Creek, both arms of Dead Boy Creek, and in the creek where Riverside Campground is located. Our tally was disappointing to Aaron, who said that the docks we were fishing should have produced a 4- or 5-pounder. We decided to head in and take a lunch break.

At Aaron’s lake house, I called Alabama Power to find out the generation times for the dam that day. From 12 to 1 p.m., one of three turbines would be turned on, and from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., two turbines would be running. Hopefully, the current produced in the lake would increase feeding activity. The phone number to find out generation times on Weiss or any other Alabama Power impoundment is (800) LAKES-11. Don’t forget that the hours given will be in Alabama time.

At 1 p.m., we headed back on the lake and began to have a little better luck. We hit docks in the mouth of Spring Creek down toward the middle of the lake, and we went back to Riverside and to Dead Boy. In Dead Boy, Aaron picked up another 16-inch chunk beneath a dock, at the end of which was eight feet of water. That’s a deep dock on Weiss. Most of the day, we were in 4- to 6-feet of water on the ends of docks.

When working docks, remember that even in stained water stealth is still a key. Aaron always drops the trolling motor a good distance from docks he intends to fish, and he approaches a dock slowly. If you come in too fast, you may wind up having to turn the trolling motor toward the dock and blow a wash of current into the cover you are about to fish, spooking any residents.

Locations we didn’t get to tour, but that Aaron recommends for dock-flipping, are Big Nose and Little Nose creeks. Yellow Creek, on the lower lake, is also full of good docks, and the docks that line the main-lake pockets from the mouth of Yellow Creek to the dam are good locations. At 3:30 p.m., we were on our way to docks in Water House Creek, back on the upper end, when lightning cracked and Aaron quickly turned the boat for home. Aaron had been saving Water House for the afternoon bite. I didn’t get to go there, but make sure you do if you head to Weiss this month.

“To be a flipper, you’ve got to be a line watcher,” says Aaron Otting. “I don’t ever like to feel a fish bite. I want to see him first.” Aaron caught this 16-inch Weiss largemouth under the dock in the background.

At the last stop we fished in the mouth of Dead Boy Creek, I spotted a crawfish clinging to a dock piling an inch or two below the surface.

“When you see that, throw a jig ‘n pig under there,” he said. We didn’t get time to try the jig ‘n pig, but make it part of your flipping arsenal this month.

One of the reasons Aaron believes that Weiss holds such a strong bass population is the fact that there is so much of the lake that the average fishermen cannot get into to fish. These shallow, wood-choked areas serve as protected spawning grounds, Aaron said. But this same characteristic of the lake, shallow water with dense wood structure, makes it dangerous for newcomers. On the upper half of the lake, driftwood coming down the Coosa is constantly shifting around and drifting loose. If you are new to Weiss, take it slow, especially in the upper lake.

Ten bass, including two 16-inch, 2-lb. bass, was our finally tally when we headed home. Aaron said I had not seen anything outstanding. Bites had been scattered and tentative.

“When the bass are biting, it’s almost like your worm just doesn’t stop moving,” he said. “When you flip it under the dock, it just turns around and starts coming back to you.”

When you head to Weiss this month, don’t feel like you have no other choice but the drudgery of dredging a ledge. The Lake Weiss shore is bristling with docks, and there are acres of shady, brush-filled habitat where you can flip a worm or a jig ‘n pig. Just give it some slack and don’t forget to watch that line.