"If you catch one fish, then you might start seeing them. You'll sometimes pull bass away from cover if you catch one. But sometimes they just blend in with the bottom; they might be lying there, and you'd never get a reading with the Lowrance (depthfinder)."

Fritts often relies upon his "feel" for a given deep-summer bite, knowledge honed by years of experience, even if his electronics aren't telling the truth.

The wild card at Buggs the last few years has been the introduction of blueback herring, which has changed bass patterns, he said.

"Herring mess up a lake because the (bass) don't get on the bottom; they're out in the middle, chasing those baits," Fritts said. "Buggs bass have become like stripers, moving around all over the lake, chasing herring. You can't count on 'em (to be oriented at deep structure) because herring swim 24 hours a day."

But there's one sure bet -- if anyone can find a way to catch bass that chase herring, David Fritts is the man.

And he'll do it with a crankbait.

Crankbaits, Color & Bass
Besides finding deep structure that holds bass during July and August, having a pliable fiberglass rod and choosing a deep diver that'll get down where the action is, David Fritts likes lures that have the right color.

And most of them resemble indigenous baitfishes.

When Fritts and Lexington lure guru Jerry Lohr, a neighbor and also a High Rock star, began tinkering with crankbaits to make them dive deeper in the 1980s, one of their tricks was to paint them colors that'd imitate a bass' favorite summer food -- bluegill bream, shad and crawfish.

So, it was off to Wal-Mart to buy brushes and dark green, chartreuse, brown, black, red and yellow paints.

Fritts even extended their theories of bass-lure color selection by tinkering with original shades. Knowing varying degrees of water clarity affect bass perceptions in the deep holes of High Rock, Buggs Island and Jordan lakes, he often put his newly-colored "baits" on the dashboard of his truck and left them there for a week or so.

"Sunlight faded the colors, and sometimes that lighter color fooled 'em better than the original paint jobs," he said. "You gotta remember the longer bream or other fish stay deep or in stained water, which you get a lot at High Rock, the lighter colors they are."

Today, Fritts has a lucrative working contract with Rapala, which makes a line of Fritts' signature DT (Down-To) crankbaits. DT-colored lures include shad, perch, firetiger, bluegill, blue shad, dark brown/craw, parrot, red crawdad, baby bass, hot mustard, greentiger and silver.

"In the middle of summer, I like to throw baits that are brown and pearl, brown and chartreuse, shad, and homer colors," he said. "Those baits work good."

Fritts said Rapala has a new color to be released soon he calls "Clark Gable," that's the greentiger with chartreuse stripes on its belly.

To increase his tournament success, Fritts also increased his strike-to-landing ratio by adding SureSet hooks to his crankbaits.

"Now if a bass short strikes or brushes up against the bait, he's gonna get stuck," he said.