Tips & Tactics

The Spawn.                                                                                                    March, 2010

 

Spring time is here and the bass are getting ready to spawn. With water temperatures rising it won’t be long. The magic temperature is 57 degrees, and holding. 

This is a great time for anglers who love to sight fish. It is also a time for novice anglers to actually see the bass on their beds. If you cruise the shore lines you will find beds in the shallow water, anywhere from 1 to 15 feet deep. Look for black or white blotches depending on the lake bottom composition. The bed or nest will range from 1 to 3 feet across. The male (buck) fish, which is always much smaller than the female, is the one who sits on the nest and protects the eggs while the female is out cruising for food. When the female is on the nest, there is no doubt, she will be a toad. At times when you find the nest it will be empty, you need to back off and look for the fish out cruising. If you don’t see her, come back later and she will be hanging around. 

 

Some great baits for bedding fish are: tubes, shallow diving crank baits, worms, rattle traps or spinner baits. Any time you can flip a tube or worm onto the bed, just let it sit there, this will aggravate the fish and in defense the fish will eat it. (a cool sight to see).   You need to pay attention to your bait and keep a tight line. The bass will spit the bait out quickly to get it off the nest. 

 

Spinner baits and crank baits can be thrown past the bed and ran slowly across the bed and again in defense to protect the eggs the bass will attack your bait. 

 

Try any of these techniques, be patient and you can count on catching some huge bass. Good luck.