Shallow bass with their dorsal and tail fins sticking out of the water? 2024
wannabeangler reply :
Night before last we had a monster storm that raised my favorite small, 90-acre lake by 2 feet, turned it into a mud bowl and dropped the surface temp a few degrees from 69 to 65ish.
I usually target the shallow flats and grass with frogs, buzzbait and worms and typically when it rains and the lake is up, bass here will still hug the shoreline ... wherever the shoreline ends up.
Yesterday afternoon/sunset we found 6 or 7 two-four pound bass in water so shallow, their dorsal and tail fins were sticking out of the water. For the most part, each bass was sticking to an area no bigger than 2-3 square feet. Sometimes they'd go out of sight, but give it a minute or two and their backs would be sticking out of the water again for minute or so ... usually as they slowly circled around.
Each one of these bass reacted the same to whatever we threw ... absolutely indifferent. We tried weightless worms, frogs, buzzbait and flukes. If we worked slow and dropped bait right on them, they'd ignore it. If we worked fast and aggressive, they'd slowly meander to another side of the grass. Not once did I see any of these fish do anything close to aggressive.
At first, I thought it could be some late spawners, but at this temp, they're normally deeper. Plus this area is normally not even underwater and it was all grass with no clear patches nor was there ever a second bass with them.
So my questions:
-a- What were these bass doing?
-b- Was there ever a shot of getting them on a hook?
Catt reply :
So my question:
Where they bass or carp?
Smiths.R reply :
They were bass...how anyone could possibly mistake a Carp for a Large Mouth Bass is beyond me.
I too have seen bass in very shallow water, or even if they are in deeper water, they will be at the very top of it, with fins sticking out of the water.
No clue what they're doing though...
Dock Master reply :
QuoteSo my question:Where they bass or carp?
X2. More than likely they where Carp. I experinced the same thing a few weeks ago and I started flipping when I saw them and I hooked into one only to see it was a Carp. Thats when I left the area to go find some Bass.
wannabeangler reply :
Definitely bass. One of them let us get within a rods distance. The canoe grounded out and I couldn't get any closer. If I could, I would've just scooped it up and taken a closer look.
And I'm with you Smith, not sure how anyone confuses bass with carp. If someone can't tell the difference, it's probably just called a "fish."
Catt reply :
Quote...how anyone could possibly mistake a Carp for a Large Mouth Bass is beyond me....
LOL...Everyone says that until they realize it was carp they were flipping to for the last couple hours.
It is not strange to see carp & bass working the same area at the same time.
I'm completely convinced that when bass are chasing live prey they will often times hit nothing but live prey.
Tin reply :
See it a lot on the shallow water swamps around here when they are prespawners and cruising the shallows. Either way they are typically hard to catch, but I will wait for them to stop cruising, they will typically stop at the nearest overhead cover or rock. So then I will just put the jig or tube in the area and it generally works out well as long as you notice them first.
Smiths.R reply :
If someone pitches at a carp for 45 minutes before realizing it's a carp, they've never seen a carp before. And what carp let's you throw at them for that long? Every carp I see is quick to get away from me.
natalex1208 reply :
You can put me on the list of people who has never cast toward a carp more than once. I have no problem telling them apart from a bass.
L a r r y reply :
They are hanging out drinking beer smoking cigaretts, talking about the next fish they are going to spawn with, leave em alone and let them get their PIMP ON 
Paul Roberts reply :
I've seen this, typically late post-spawn into summer until water temps reach something near 80. I've taken it for heat soaking/sunning. It's happens on sunny days in which the shallows heat rapidly. I've caught these fish too -usually a weightless worm or killed jig. Somewhere in my journal I have a description of such a day in June here, in which the shallows were crawling with bass. Many came so shallow their backs and dorsal fins broke the surface. I commented for one big female, "Ooooooooohhhhh, that feels goooood." ;D
Curious, what were your conditions like? Was it post-frontal sun?
Smiths.R reply :
I think that is a really good hypothesis. Everytime I see it, it's quite warm out, and the sun is shinning. I bet that's exactly what they're doing.
senile1 reply :
QuoteQuote...how anyone could possibly mistake a Carp for a Large Mouth Bass is beyond me....
LOL...Everyone says that until they realize it was carp they were flipping to for the last couple hours.
It is not strange to see carp & bass working the same area at the same time.
I'm completely convinced that when bass are chasing live prey they will often times hit nothing but live prey.
To add support to Catt's comment, knowledgeable people can mistake bass for carp especially when one only has a tip of a fin or tail to make the determination. You said your lake was a mud bowl so this would have been the case, and if you were quite a distance away you wouldn't have had a very good view of the portion of the tail and fin that was sticking out of the water. Since you were able to move up close to these fish you were able to see what they were but Catt's point is still valid.
mr.mallard reply :
]spinnnnerrrrrbaitttttt!!!!!!!!...found this once. fished close enough that they didnt feel threatened by the bait.fish are up this shallow eating food and nutrients that are washed in from the shoreline(of at least thats what ive read)
WRB reply :
Lets play this back; muddy water on the rise and 2lb to 4lb bass tailing with backs or dorsal fins out of the water, very shallow water. About right?
I have only been bass fishing about 60 years and can't remember ever seeing bass tailing or having their dorsal fins up while swimming in shallow water.
Catt had right; are you sure you were seeing bass?
Catfish are a possibility and so are carp, bass....very unlikely.
Bass will cruise spawning flats, not so shallow that you see any part of the fish out of water, unless they are feeding aggressively and pushing bait against the bank. If this was the situation the bass would be extremely fast swimmers, you couldn't get close without spooking them.
Bass in the act of spawning, not likely that tight to the bank in rising water. Carp and catfish act exactly like the fish you witnessed. All these fish, including bass have dark silhouettes in off color water, very difficult to determine the species from a short distance without seeing the fish come out of the water.
Just curious; how did you estimate the weigh in off color water with poor visibility? Water distorts the fishes width, so the only method is judging the length.
WRB
shimmy reply :
i think i am man enough to admit that i have seen this before as well. I pitched towards that stupid fish for half an hour before the light registered in my head...it's probably a carp! So i motored closer and sure enough it was. Happens to the best of us.
RichF reply :
I saw the same thing today. They were definitely bass. Got close enough to see the entire fish. We just had some hard rain yesterday. The river isn't high here in NY and its maybe in the mid to high 50s. I figured these fish were doing something in regards to spawning. Seems early to me but I've never seen bass do anything like this.
igtat900 reply :
You sure it wasnt a carp?
fourbizz reply :
Quote
OBNOXIOUS
BassAssasin2 reply :
The two ponds i fish have the exact same thing. And yes they are bass because i have caught them, usually a top water frog works. But they are sometimes as many as 10 in one little area and when they swim they push a wake of water in front of them and you can see their dorsal and tail fins sticking out. And unless carp put on a bass suit then they are bass. And i have no idea why they do it.
SuskyDude reply :
I too have seen AND caught LM doing this.
Was fishing a pond when I noticed fins poking out in the middle of a large shallow flat, a few sets of them. Water was less than a foot deep.
They weren't doing much. Not really chasing, but not exactly stationary.
Caught two of them on a weightless senko, missed another.
It was mid-May, a chilly morning with clear skies and no wind. Lots of other fish I saw that morning were close to shore on nests. These fish didn't "seem" like nesters, but I could easily be wrong.
There are no carp in this pond.
evrgladesbasser reply :
QuoteNight before last we had a monster storm that raised my favorite small, 90-acre lake by 2 feet, turned it into a mud bowl and dropped the surface temp a few degrees from 69 to 65ish.I usually target the shallow flats and grass with frogs, buzzbait and worms and typically when it rains and the lake is up, bass here will still hug the shoreline ... wherever the shoreline ends up.
Yesterday afternoon/sunset we found 6 or 7 two-four pound bass in water so shallow, their dorsal and tail fins were sticking out of the water. For the most part, each bass was sticking to an area no bigger than 2-3 square feet. Sometimes they'd go out of sight, but give it a minute or two and their backs would be sticking out of the water again for minute or so ... usually as they slowly circled around.
Each one of these bass reacted the same to whatever we threw ... absolutely indifferent. We tried weightless worms, frogs, buzzbait and flukes. If we worked slow and dropped bait right on them, they'd ignore it. If we worked fast and aggressive, they'd slowly meander to another side of the grass. Not once did I see any of these fish do anything close to aggressive.
At first, I thought it could be some late spawners, but at this temp, they're normally deeper. Plus this area is normally not even underwater and it was all grass with no clear patches nor was there ever a second bass with them.
So my questions:
-a- What were these bass doing?
-b- Was there ever a shot of getting them on a hook?
Maybe it has something to do with oxygen content???? You say they are always near the shore regardless of where the waters edge is, is this where the most vegetation is? That would provide the most O2 content I beleive. And If the temps are cold then the vegatation in the shallows gets the most sun causing the most photosynthesis right? Not posistive on all this but makes sense to me, why else would a bass be so shallow unless it was suffocating?
blakebrown71 reply :
This is an old post but looks like I'll bring it back to life.
I found this thread from a google search to figure out what the bass I saw today in a local pond were doing. The pond is roughly 3-4 acres, typical greenish brownish tint, ~1-2 feet visibility. Lots of submerged rocks along the first few feet of shoreline.
The past few days I've been fishing during my lunch break (mid day), 50-60 degree air temp, my guess is water temp was similar. Lots of sun along the shoreline. I've noticed the exact same things described. Fish seem to be "digging" down into the rocks and soft bottom with their dorsal fins sticking up. Today I saw one that seemed to be fairly large and actually wondered if it was a small carp instead of a decent bass. Unfortunately I didn't have any tubes with me so I tossed a jig right to it for a while before it disappeared. Also ran a 1/4 oz spinnerbait through the area for a while after I lost him. No reaction from either presentation.
I would've settled on the idea that it was a carp if it weren't for some of the posts in this thread, and the fact that I saw this exact same thing at the same pond a few days ago, tossed a 4" senko to it and caught a small bass on the first cast. I definitely think the larger one I saw today was a bass as well.
Unfortunately I don't have an answer as to what they're doing, that's why I'm here. Definitely sounds like a trend for small ponds though.
Yeajray231 reply :
That's a carp 
Mosster47 reply :
I've seen it at least three times that I can remember and in water where there is nothing but bass, trout, and panfish. It's only been in super muddy water. The 7.4lb northern strain I caught last year did this in about 18" of water.
I've seen it on TV before too. It might have been Hackney. There was a huge female with her whole tail and about three inches of her body out of the water with her dorsal. It's where I got the idea to throw all the way onto the bank with a spinnerbait which is what they did to not spook her. It was also in muddy water.
WRB reply :
On 5/12/2017 at 3:50 AM, blakebrown71 said:This is an old post but looks like I'll bring it back to life.
I found this thread from a google search to figure out what the bass I saw today in a local pond were doing. The pond is roughly 3-4 acres, typical greenish brownish tint, ~1-2 feet visibility. Lots of submerged rocks along the first few feet of shoreline.
The past few days I've been fishing during my lunch break (mid day), 50-60 degree air temp, my guess is water temp was similar. Lots of sun along the shoreline. I've noticed the exact same things described. Fish seem to be "digging" down into the rocks and soft bottom with their dorsal fins sticking up. Today I saw one that seemed to be fairly large and actually wondered if it was a small carp instead of a decent bass. Unfortunately I didn't have any tubes with me so I tossed a jig right to it for a while before it disappeared. Also ran a 1/4 oz spinnerbait through the area for a while after I lost him. No reaction from either presentation.
I would've settled on the idea that it was a carp if it weren't for some of the posts in this thread, and the fact that I saw this exact same thing at the same pond a few days ago, tossed a 4" senko to it and caught a small bass on the first cast. I definitely think the larger one I saw today was a bass as well.
Unfortunately I don't have an answer as to what they're doing, that's why I'm here. Definitely sounds like a trend for small ponds though.
Judging from the photo your pond isn't on the rise or muddy, you caught a spawner!
Tom
OCdockskipper reply :
At the Elite tournament on Lake Havasu back in 2015, Tim Horton found a bed fish that looked to be a large male. He spent about 45 minutes on it, finally got it to bite, and brought to the boat a 3.5 lb Redear sunfish.
If a former AOY can make this mistake on a lake with crystal clear water like Havasu, I don't feel so bad when I make a half dozen pitches to the shadow of a rock...
CroakHunter reply :
On 5/12/2017 at 2:32 PM, OCdockskipper said:At the Elite tournament on Lake Havasu back in 2015, Tim Horton found a bed fish that looked to be a large male. He spent about 45 minutes on it, finally got it to bite, and brought to the boat a 3.5 lb Redear sunfish.
If a former AOY can make this mistake on a lake with crystal clear water like Havasu, I don't feel so bad when I make a half dozen pitches to the shadow of a rock...
The things I'd do to catch a 3.5lb red ear are illegal in 27 states. Lol
Pro Logcatcher reply :
I have seen extremely shallow bass in an overgrown pond in the woods before.The water was really shallow so I don't think they had a choice in the matter unless twenty of them piled in the deeper middle section.
toni63 reply :
I saw one wallowing around on a shallow flat a couple years ago, tail out of the water, full dorsal fin exposed. I was pretty surprised to see it, it kind of looked like it was rooting around in the mud for crawdads or something that had gotten its interest. I threw a big buzz bait about 10 yards past it and worked it right past it's tail. It turned around and destroyed that thing like it hated it.
So that was fun.
scaleface reply :
On 5/13/2017 at 3:25 AM, toni63 said:I saw one wallowing around on a shallow flat a couple years ago, tail out of the water, full dorsal fin exposed. I was pretty surprised to see it, it kind of looked like it was rooting around in the mud for crawdads or something that had gotten its interest. I threw a big buzz bait about 10 yards past it and worked it right past it's tail. It turned around and destroyed that thing like it hated it.
So that was fun.
I saw the same thing one fall day. I thought it was a carp .I pitched a worm at it and caught a 15 inch keeper .
Rdozz0915 reply :
I too have experienced this at my go to pond i thought it waa carp the whole ive been fishing it. Get a little rain temp drops and around dusk on the dot you start to see em. Swimming around dorcel fins. I jokingly told my wife today whatch this and i hit one in the head with my swim jig and it demolished it caught my pb large mouth 11pound 2 ounce and the crazy thing is there are bigger ones. All doing the same thing about 10 of them swimming on the surface with their dorcel fins out and they dont want to bite anything ive thrown out of them. One of them is literally laying in 7 to 8" of water if that i could of grabbed her off the bank atleast 7 plus bass. Can onyone tell me whats going on ive never in all my life seen bass act this way
buzzbaiter83 reply :
Saw the same thing on Douglas Lake last month. Water was up as high as I’ve seen it there. Could see dorsal fins shallow in people’s yards around trees. Told my partner they had to be carp. Threw a frog for the heck of it and caught one. Caught several more. No big ones but definitely surprised me. Maybe eating night crawlers that got flooded out of their holes. I’ve seen them do that in my backyard pond up shallow in rising water.
Glaucus reply :
Bass do this all throughout the summer in one of the ponds I fish. They get so shallow that you can see their dorsal fins poking out of the water. They're always facing the bank too. Just sitting and waiting to attack. Minnows are all along the shore, and frogs sit right at the bank too. You'll see or hear the bass blowing up on minnows or frogs all the time. The pond is crystal clear. Aside from getting a great visual on them to 100% identify them as LMB, I've also caught them while they do this. I'll cast past them or onto the shore and drag a weightless trick worm right to them and they destroy it. Those who haven't seen it, well that sucks, but bass do do this. Because *you* haven't seen it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. The world doesn't revolve around your personal experiences.
BassWhole! reply :
On 5/6/2010 at 10:17 AM, WRB said:Lets play this back; muddy water on the rise and 2lb to 4lb bass tailing with backs or dorsal fins out of the water, very shallow water. About right?
I have only been bass fishing about 60 years and can't remember ever seeing bass tailing or having their dorsal fins up while swimming in shallow water.
Catt had right; are you sure you were seeing bass?
Catfish are a possibility and so are carp, bass....very unlikely.
Bass will cruise spawning flats, not so shallow that you see any part of the fish out of water, unless they are feeding aggressively and pushing bait against the bank. If this was the situation the bass would be extremely fast swimmers, you couldn't get close without spooking them.
Bass in the act of spawning, not likely that tight to the bank in rising water. Carp and catfish act exactly like the fish you witnessed. All these fish, including bass have dark silhouettes in off color water, very difficult to determine the species from a short distance without seeing the fish come out of the water.
Just curious; how did you estimate the weigh in off color water with poor visibility? Water distorts the fishes width, so the only method is judging the length.
WRB
Put me in this camp. In all the times I've been on the water, I've only seen bass cruising with fins out of the water a handful of times, and never in muddy water. Fish look very different in the water, and its easy to misidentify them, even in clear water and good light. Which is not to say that there aren't times when there is a good bite in a foot of water, I've certainly seen that plenty.
Cheri reply :
This exact thing is happening at my pond. I saw it yesterday evening. I saw 3-4. Two of the 4, I saw up close. Exactly as others described, so shallow their dorsal and backs and tail fins all showing. In our pond, they are definitely large mouth bass. (I find it odd that so many respondents focus on that aspect of the story.) Our pond is very low right now. It's always been pretty mirky (can only see bait under water within first 12 inches) except for undisturbed areas right on the edge. We think possibly due to weather patterns they could be spawning late? I guess I shouldn't worry about the beds being so shallow? The bass we catch seem to be healthy and thriving.
Edited to add: the bass were very difficult to distract with topwaters or plastics thrown within 2 feet. I even accidentally dropped an oar in my aluminum boat while investigating 10 feet away, and he/she sat still. It wasn't until I literally pulled one within inches or cast literally on top of them when they'd thrash and scatter, only to return within 20 minutes or less.
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