Wolf Pack Bass

The search for wolf pack bass isn’t always blind casting to banks. Often, you can see a pack of bass working a shoreline looking for a summertime meal.

The summer heat has reached its peak across much of the Southeast, and it’s about wore out its welcome. The bass fishing can be tough during the summer, with bass pushing deeper and deeper on many fisheries as they seek out the cooler water near the thermocline. 

But inevitably every year, there comes a point in the summer when the thermocline is so deep that the water pressure the bass have to endure to hang out there just isn’t worthwhile. It’s around this time of the summer when the water temps have peaked that we see a decent chunk of the bass population abandon the depths and make their way back to the banks. 

Often, these are some of the larger, more experienced bass that make this early transition ahead of the masses. As these bigger fish start to beat the banks in search of spawning bluegill and other food sources, they’ll begin to group up, and a natural phenomenon occurs that shows just how resourceful, instinctual and intelligent bass really are. 

Forming small schools often referred to as wolf packs, bass will begin to hunt in numbers, similar to how you see wolves and other animals hunt in packs. The bass just seem to know there’s a better chance for each of them to eat if they attack as a pack than there is if one of them tries to attack a bluegill bed or other food source alone. 

If you start to look along the banks of many fisheries this time of year, you’ll likely run across one of these schools where there are often anywhere from two bass to 2-dozen bass grouped up and terrorizing anything small that swims shallow in the summer. Bluegill are typically the first food group to come to mind.

But wolf-packing bass are just as likely to attack baby ducks, rats, chipmunks, snakes, frogs—or anything else they come across. The presence of the other bass in the pack typically lead these fish to strike first and consider the consequences later, where isolated bass might be a little more hesitant to attack a big meal other times of the year. In these settings, with so much competition present, these fish know they have to act fast or miss out on a meal. 

The fact that these are super aggressive schools of bass makes them particularly appealing to an angler. However, there is a counterpart in this decision-making process… these wolf pack schools are often few and far between. An angler might have to go an hour or more between bites at times, but when he stumbles on another school, things can get right in a hurry. 

Personally, this is my preferred way of fishing in the summer. And I’m even guilty of living and dying with this technique a little early in the summer, which often means there’s a little more dying than living being done. But it’s such an exhilarating way to fish that I hate the thought of missing out on this bite, so I try to at least look for it anytime I make a trip in the summer. 

And though this is a technique that reaches its peak as the water temps hit theirs, it is something that produces throughout the summer if there are bluegill or other panfish spawning shallow. For most fisheries across the Southeast, spawning bluegill and other bream are prevalent shallow on full and new moons from May all the way through September. So this can be a producer off and on throughout the summer.

But it’s this late-summer window, August through September, when this bite is the best. And there are a few keys to targeting these fish. For starters, you’ll want to fish fairly shallow banks or at least banks with shallow little pockets where the bream can spawn. Again, these bass are likely to eat anything in their path, but the spawning bream are the mainstay of their diet. So locating banks and little cuts where these bream are bedding will help you narrow down where to fish. 

These stretches can go on for hundreds of yards, even miles at times. And the bluegill and other bream will spawn along these same stretches month after month, year after year. The wolf packs of bass cruise up and down these stretches, often so shallow that their backs are just under the water’s surface, exploding on fleeing baitfish anytime they come across a bedding area. Then, once the bed has been wrecked, the bass group back up and often carry on in search of another bream bed instead of hanging around and waiting for those bream they just assaulted to regroup. 

As an angler, it’s typically best to follow the bass’s lead. Just get on shallow stretch like this, put the trolling motor on high, and start down the bank. Hugging the bank and paralleling it with your cast is typically the most efficient way to fish. This allows you to cover as much water as possible as fast as possible, while keeping your bait in the strike zone the whole time. You’ll likely go 500 to 1,000 yards without a bite at times, but when you do get a bite, there will be a half-dozen big ones fighting over your bait. 

Topwater is the productive search bait when working down a bank trying to find wolf pack bass.

A topwater that can be reeled is often the best bait for this bite. So something like a toad, buzzbait or Whopper Plopper, for instance. These are some of the fastest baits you can fish, since they can be reeled continuously, and they have a lot of drawing power. Again, these bass are usually super aggressive, so they’re typically willing to jump all over a topwater.

It is a good idea though to have a follow-up bait like a wacky rig tied on and at the ready. If a fish does blow up on a topwater and doesn’t get it, you can usually throw the wacky rig in there and at least have a pretty good shot at getting the bass to bite again, where a follow-up cast with the same topwater typically won’t even garner a second look.

The wacky rig is also an  effective tool to use in high-percentage places. Again, the topwaters are great because you can cover a lot of water with them, effectively fishing through the dead water between bites as fast as possible. But there are key places where the chances of a bite rise exponentially— backs of pockets, patches of shade, treetops and bluegill beds just to name a few. 

A wacky-rig works well as a follow-up bait when a bass misses a topwater plug, and also for slowing down to fish high-percentage spots.

So it’s not a bad idea to make that first cast into those high-percentage places using the wacky rig. This will eliminate some of the near misses where bass just roll on a topwater and don’t eat it, since there is a decent chance of that happening at times. A drop shot is another great bait to have on hand for this, since it can be pitched into the ends of treetops that might be a little deeper out off the bank. 

The highest likelihood of having a wolf pack of bass blow up on a topwater and not get it is direct sunlight. So topwaters are most effective during the low light of early morning and late evening, as well as in any shade that you can find throughout the day. You can actually use the shade to concentrate the fish. As the sun continues to rise and make its way overhead, the shade will recede slowly on certain banks.

As the shade tightens to the bank, the bass will typically tighten up to the bank along with it. This narrows the strike zone and really helps to concentrate the fish. Likewise, once the sun makes its way directly overhead and then starts to set, the shade will increase on other banks. So from say 10 to 2 o’clock, you’ll actually find that it’s best to transition from one side of a fishery to the other to follow the shade. 

A shady bank on a hot August day is a high-percentage, small-window spot where an angler should slow down the search for a bite from wolf-packing bass.

Overhanging bushes, docks and other structures that provide shade are also important to note. There are times when wolf packs of bass come across these ambush points, and they’ll actually peel off from the bigger schools individually or in small groups and hunker down in the cool of the shade to await passing prey.

A well-placed topwater can draw some awesome strikes in these little key areas. But the smaller the patch of shade, the bigger the risk of having a fish follow the bait out of the shade and turn off as it hits the bright sunshine. That’s why it’s often best to throw something like a wacky rig into these tight-window, high-percentage places. Or, if you do go with a topwater, choose one that you can fish slowly. 

For instance, a popper, popping frog or prop bait that you can twitch and pause can all be great producers in these small windows. Just some topwater that doesn’t require constant reeling for the bait to create its action. Compare a popper to a buzzbait, for example. If you throw a buzzbait right against the bank in a 3-foot patch of shade, the bait is out of the strike zone in three seconds. Where you could make the same cast with a popper and take 15 seconds to work that spot.

You could fish even slower than that if you’d like. But typically, if a bass is going to bite in a window that small, even 5 or 10 seconds is plenty of time. The starting and stopping of the bait has a tendency to create a collision with the fish. Where the quick passing of a reeling bait through a window like this is often only enough to pique their interest and talk them into following the bait right out into the sun, where they’ll almost always boil on the bait and miss it or turn off of it.

When targeting wolf-packing bass, the one-two punch of a topwater and a follow-up finesse bait works really well. Remember that shade, bream beds and cover are all your friends with this technique, as they are indicators of high percentage places to get a bite. And don’t get discouraged if you throw a topwater for 30 minutes down 500 yards of bank without a bite. Sometimes you have to cover a lot of water to find them. 

But when you do, things can and will change quickly with this technique. You may go from not seeing anything to suddenly seeing a dozen 3- to 5-pounders climbing all over each other to get a shot at your lure, only to quickly hit another lull. So there are certainly highs and lows with this deal. But it is an extremely exciting way to fish. So you should definitely give targeting wolf pack bass a try the next time you’re out on the water in the heat of late summer.