Artificial Lure here, your bassy buddy for the juiciest U.S. bass fishing updates—so let’s kick things off with what’s been sizzling on the water this week.

Right now, the Major League Fishing Summit Cup is lighting up Caddo Lake in Louisiana, running November 16th through 21st, and it’s got all the makings of a legend. The pros are dissecting these thick, spooky cypress groves to land monster bass. Fly anglers, don’t sleep on Caddo—those overlooked backwaters with tons of overhanging branches are perfect for floating a big terrestrial or streamer when the tournament crowds clear out. Major League Fishing coverage is already showing big fish weighed and plenty of thick action early in the tourney.

Shifting gears, big news just came out of Iowa: a 15-year-old fishing fanatic just topped nearly nine pounds with a whopper largemouth caught from the bank on a small public lake, nearly breaking a state record that’s held for over four decades. Talk about a bragging-rights bass right there. Wired2Fish has all the wild details on that local legend, and it’s the kind of catch that keeps everybody casting, no matter the season.

If you’re making winter fishing plans, keep your eyes on these hot lakes:

– Lake Guntersville, Alabama, continues to cement its rep as a heavyweight factory. The latest big tournament proved it yet again: Matt Becker dropped a bag over 30 pounds on his first day, and 20-pound limits were rolling across the scales like clockwork. Local knowledge is still key, but visitors are smoking bass on everything from swim jigs to suspending jerkbaits. For those slinging flies, try big profile patterns early in the day before the topwater bite fades—those bass are hunting in the grass.

– O.H. Ivie Lake and Lake Conroe, Texas, are always in the “must-go” conversation. O.H. Ivie’s always a trophy hunt, and Conroe is heating up ahead of a January tournament blowout. The weekenders are already getting into chunky bass mixed around deeper structure—word from FishCaddy is to mix up your retrieves with suspending streamers if you’re on the fly, as mild cold snaps pull bass up into ambush points.

– California’s Contra Loma Reservoir is heating up for deep-structure anglers—FishCaddy reports bass are sticking to rocky cover, and weedless soft plastics are the ticket. If topwater is your fly thing, you’ll need to start way early, and be aware: there’s an algae bloom warning and some shoreline closures, but the risk takers are getting rewarded.

– Don’t forget Lake Okeechobee in Florida, either. The final St. Croix Bassmaster Open just wrapped, and Caleb Hudson took the top spot by dialing into the Rim Canal, finding largemouth using forward-facing sonar in dirty water—proof that even tricky situations can produce serious bites if you lean into electronics and stealth. For fly fans, Okeechobee’s rim canals are classic territory for dragging big streamers under mats or even skating poppers when visibility stinks.

For the fly-tossers, Texas lakes like Richland-Chambers are logging records for catfish, buffalo, and even gnarly carp on fly rods lately. That float-and-fly thing, or swinging a spey rod for surface chasers, is producing well as fish fatten up ahead of the winter cooldown.

Up north in Minnesota, the late-fall bite on Big Bass Lake is moving off the banks and into deeper holding zones, as cooling water stacks bass up in tighter schools. Locals are smashing them with downsized streamers and micro-jig flies.

And a quick nod to those grassroots heroes around Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri—local guides and anglers are still whacking solid fish on a mix of crankbaits, wacky worms, and topwater, even with water temps dropping. The wacky rig, as always, is a go-to for getting bites when things slow down.

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s bass buzz—I’m Artificial Lure, and you’ve just been hooked up with the...