Bass fishing can be a game of angles.

The typical angle for a boat fisherman is to fish from shallow to deep, holding the boat on the deep side of potential — and more shallow — bass holding targets like weed edges and stump flats. Crawford County bass fishing enthusiast Chad Templin often uses a crankbait to throw a mid-summer changeup.

“My favorite summertime crankbait trick is to fish from shallow to deep,” said Templin. “I catch most of my biggest bass by either anchoring or drifting a few feet inside the deep edge of a weedline and casting out to deeper water.”

Templin uses this approach on lakes like Conneaut and Kahle, places that often feature a well-defined outside weed edge.

“This allows you to not only catch fish that may be less active along the bottom — 10 to 20 feet out from the weed edge — but also more aggressive fish that are tucked right inside the cover, using it as an ambush point to pick out a meal,” he added. “You are basically crawling the bait up the ledge. I get most of my strikes as the bait approaches the dropoff, and by shaking the lure and working it through the weed edge.”

Templin uses a long-casting rod and fluorocarbon line to make maximum length casts to assist in getting a crankbait to its maximum depth. Often he employs a special weight that is epoxy glued to a crankbait lip so the lure quickly sinks. He’s found that this tactic works not only for covering the outside weed edge and the nearby open water, but also for any secondary structures that might lie out in deeper, but nearby water. In this case, the crankbait can be used as a search bait.

“Conneaut for instance, has a secondary dropoff in 20 to 30 feet of water,” noted Templin. “A weighted crankbait sinks quickly like a jig, but fishes much more quickly than a jig. It allows you to cover a lot of deep water, which you can’t do with a jig or a worm. When you end up catching one out there you know some fish are holding deep. Then you can go back and work the area more thoroughly with a spoon or blade bait, since you are confident the bass are there.”

While weed edges and deep structure represent principal cover options that bass use in the summer, some fish stay shallow, particularly when there is significant shallow water weed growth present. By mid-to-late summer, submergent weeds like milfoil will often be to the surface, particularly in shallow areas. One of the more productive — and exciting — ways to target expansive weed flats is with a topwater frog.

“What I like to look for is a shallow, weedy bay or flat that’s being fed by an incoming creek,” says Cambria County-based tournament angler Chuck Aurandt. “Even though the water’s hot the incoming creek will provide somewhat cooler water and oxygen under mats of weeds and lily pads.”

Aurandt has found that while the edges of these flats are targeted by anglers flippin’ jigs and worms, the interior tends to be left alone. This leaves a lot of water to hold fish, sometimes bigger bass than what’s picked off along the edge.

Using either a white or black floating frog, Aurandt likes a sunny day to target shade-providing mats of milfoil, and floating weeds like spatterdock and lily pads. He uses 7 1/2 foot medium — heavy power baitcasting rod with a relatively light tip, the reel spooled with 50-pound braided superline. Targeting little points and troughs within a weed flat, oftentimes provided by the meandering of the incoming creek channel, Aurandt experiments with various retrieve cadences to find out what’s turning the bass on that particular day.

Aurandt has a couple of tricks to up the hookup ratio on floating frogs, which can be the Achilles’ heel of the presentation.

“I trim the tentacles of the frog, which come from the manufacturer about three inches long, down to one inch,” he explained. “This provides less obstruction to interfere with a clean hookup. Also, I open up the gap of the hook. You are going to get a little more slop on the hook, a weed here and there, or the snagging of a lily pad. But my hookup ratio has gone up tremendously since I’ve started doing this, and you’ve got to let the fish take the bait. They’ll hold on to it. I even shoot a little fish attractant into the body of the lure to help ensure they clamp down and hold it.”

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.