July is that time of the year in Central Texas where the water temperature on Lake Travis reaches 80 degrees and usually stays there until September. The post-spawn schooling activity tends to concentrate in a few areas of the lake as the bass push deeper in a migration towards cooler water. For the past week, I’ve been lucky enough to find a few of these concentrations of suspended bass with the help of my electronics like the Garmin Livescope, and I’ve put my clients on some nice largemouth bass “keepers”. Deep water marinas on the main lake are the first places I look when trying to find the deep water suspended bass. I’ve covered about 25 miles of Lake Travis on multiple trips the past week, and the bass are all suspended about 30 feet deep over 60 to 100 feet of water on a few of the key main lake marinas. Depending on the time of day, the schools of bass can surface every few minutes to feed, or only once every 20 minutes. The key to catching is to get the bait down to the schools between the feeding frenzies or entice them to the surface. My top two “go-to” baits that are easy for some of my more novice clients are the weighted fluke and a topwater spook. Cast the bait out where the school appears on the Garmin Livescope and work it back to the boat! I usually let the fluke sink for about 15 seconds before ripping it back to the boat. With the spook, I make pretty aggressive jerks to create some serious commotion on the surface. I believe this really gets the attention of the bass when they are down 30 feet or more. Lake Travis is a super clear lake and these bass can see the surface from 60 feet deep! When the lake boat traffic makes it tough to fish the main lake marinas, it’s time to move to some easier fishing areas. Using a drop shot or ned rig behind the marinas consistently produces good numbers. On an evening trip this past Friday the weekend boat traffic was in full swing. It was impossible to fish any of the schooling areas on the deep-water main lake marinas. We spent most of the trip fishing two productive marinas that were 20 to 30 feet deep on the shallow side and protected from all the wake of the weekend boaters. The first marina produced multiple keepers and about twice as many shorter bass. We ended the trip behind one of the largest marinas on the lake and found one pocket that held a few more keepers. These fish were feeding on the crawfish that are native to most Central Texas lakes. Craws and worms seem to work the best when targeting these bass. There are many factors that can make fishing during the dog days of summer a success. Knowledge of fishing patterns, as well as what’s under the water, are key to catching bass when the water temp is near the mid-80s. Let Captain Randal with Central Texas Fishing Guide help guide you to success in fishing! Tight Lines.