Fishing in the middle of a warm summer night for Large-mouth bass when your the only person around is one of my favorite things. This is a great pattern for the dog days of summer when the bass are buried deep hiding from the sun and the heat of the day, not to mention all the people and anglers on the water in the summer months.

Top-water fishing in the middle of the night is prime fishing. This is when the big large mouths are less spooky they start to roam, and come out to hunt.

I will go with a spinning setup of a 7' medium heavy st croix rod with a Shimano Stradic reel spooled with 20 lb Power Pro braided line. I will use this set up 90% of the time as it is much less maintenance and no picking out the occasional birds nest aka.. back lashes in the dark. I also keep it very simple as far as lure selection using only a few specific lures that I call my "Night Stalker" baits.

My " NIGHT STALKER " Baits

• 3/8oz Buzz Bait w/black skirt
• 1/2oz Zara super spook Jr in any dark color you have
• 1/4oz Rebel pop R in any dark color you have
• 3/8 oz Black Jitterbugs..1 straight and 1 crack back if you have one
• 5/8 oz Boze sumo frog in black

That's it, that is all you need for a night of explosive top water action and possibly some of the biggest fish of your life. Now by no means do you need all these lures to start fishing at night these are just my recommendations. There are lots of times when I am just sneaking out for a quick trip for an hour or so and I will just bring one rod and one lure usually the buzz bait.

I will always start with the buzz bait and use it as search and destroy weapon varying my retrieves from the slowest crawl I can get and still keep the buzz bait waking the surface, to an erratic rip and burn as fast as I can retrieve. I will try every speed in between until I find what the fish are keying on.

I make a mental note of missed strikes as to where and how the bait was missed... IE are the fish jumping out the water over the top of my lure or snapping at the back missing it do to speed. I will then follow up with one of the slower presentations like the Zara spook or Pop R.

Now for what what makes fishing at this time of the night a blast and what I like most... Take your black jitterbug and make long casts, and crawl it as slow as you can while retrieving it parallel to the shore lines or along the out side edges of weed lines, lay downs or logs.

If there is some bright moonshine I will look for where it shines on the water and cast the jitterbug as far as I can where the light is shining and crawl it threw where the moon shines on the water with an enticingly slow gurgling retrieve and oh yeah..... hold on!.

If your not getting strikes change up to your cracked back jitterbug and if still no strikes then, bring out your secret weapon. The Boze sumo frog...... and throw this bad boy every where!

Start by bringing it from open water into or over the weeds, lilly pads, and logs don't worry about snags you can throw this lure everywhere. Also try throwing it right up to the bank and bring it out from the weeds or pads and into the open water.

When it comes to setting the hook at night with frogs I do things differently then I do in the daytime when I can see better and in those situations I prefer to set the hook immediately.

At night time I do just the opposite and I wait until I feel the weight of the fish before I set the hook, as you wont always feel the strikes, and your biggest fish a lot of times will just inhale the bait off the surface with out a big showing jump and splash when attacking the bait.

So now that you know how, where, and what to use....get your gear together and get out there on those hot summer nights you just might end up hooked liked me.

You can find more of my Bass Fishing articles, tips,and tricks at http://www.tournamentbasstackle.com

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