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Late Summer Choices on Sangchris Lake

Sangchris Lake , southeast of Springfield , is 2200 acres of countless points, pockets, and coves. Patches of lily pads are so numerous that it would take days to thoroughly fish them all.

Narrowing your choice of bass fishing locations on Sanchris is further complicated by the 25 horsepower limit on motors. Deciding where to start can be overwhelming. You can't possibly fish it all.

With a tournament approaching and only two or three practice days available, I had to narrow the choices for tournament day.

Most fishermen agree that the first place to start is to obtain a quality map of the lake. One source for a Sangchris map is Fishing Hot Spots Maps. This part of your search can begin before you leave home.

Spend some time studying where the creek channels, roadbeds, brush piles, and farm ponds are located on the lake. Take note of water depths.

After the map study, develop a game plan based on the seasonal location of bass. Eliminate areas of the lake based on the season and your map study. Develop what Rick Clunn calls a "confidence area" based on these factors.

A good place to start searching during late summer on Sangchris is the main basin of the lake near the dam and main lake pockets and points close to creek channels. Having deep water close to your fishing areas is a good idea.

After narrowing down your options based on the lake map and seasonal locations, you can take your initial fishing trip with a game plan. You think about these things prior to your trip because you don't want to "just go fishing," you want to "go looking" also.

Once on the lake, I like to use two search tools to locate cover on the structures that I have chosen to fish. I'm looking for the stumps and brush piles that are prevalent in Sangchris.

The first tool is my depth finder. Keeping your eye on the depth finder is essential to finding cover and depth changes.

The second tool is a Carolina rig that I use to cover water quickly and feel the lake bottom. Some fishermen prefer to use crankbaits for this search. I don't use jigs or worms when I'm searching because Carolina rigs are more efficient, but it takes patience to stick with this method.

After I've studied the maps and established some "confidence areas" based on the season, I fish some potential spots with a Carolina rig to find cover on those structures.

I try to concentrate on finding unseen cover rather than the shallow, visible cover that everybody else fishes. The Carolina rig helps find some of this deeper cover that some fishermen ignore.

My next trip to the lake is when I fine tune the lure selection based on the structure you found with your electronics and a Carolina rig. You can't effectively study your depth finder and find structure with your Carolina rig if you are changing lures all day. I fish the shallow cover first and then any deeper cover near where I catch bass.

This particular trip I caught my biggest bass on a huge stump in two feet of water. During the tournament, I caught another keeper 20 yards from this stump from a brush pile that I found with a Carolina rig.

The lures that caught the most bass at Sangchris were electric blue plastic crawdads and red shad worms fished in 5-10 feet of water in unseen cover.

To make your efforts pay off during future trips you should make yourself a record that details your results. Mark your maps and make good notes about the fishing day. This will give you a great place to start for your next trip.