If you learn the times, places and strategies to capitalize on the shad spawn, spring bass action can be spectacular. Here’s what you need to know.
The bass spawn may be over but don’t head for deeper water yet. On lakes that team with shad, one of the best shallow fishing opportunities of the season happens when these baitfish spawn. Anglers who take advantage of this phenomenon to catch spring bass, such as Alabama bass guide Jimmy Mason, refer to it simply as “the shad spawn.”
“I start seriously looking for spawning shad in the spring when the water temperature stays above 70 degrees at night,” Mason said. “Here in northern Alabama that usually happens around the last week of April to the first week of May.”
Learn why the Ned rig has become so popular and how to fish this finesse rig effectively.
Just as the title implies, we are going to break down the ever-successful Ned rig technique that has swept across the country as a great way to easily catch bass in tough conditions.
What is the Ned rig?
The Ned rig is a finesse fishing technique that involves using small plastic worms, craws, or creatures paired with a light mushroom style head so it can easily float off the bottom. This rig was originally created by outdoor writer Ned Kehde and popularized in the Midwest – so the name Ned rig stuck because of him!
The Ned rig might have reached popularity in the last ten years, but it has been around for quite a while in some form or fashion on most pressured fisheries. The first rig I learned growing up was actually a type of technique similar to this, but we simply called it “jig head worm fishing.” This was casting out a small YUM finesse worm on a light jighead with the hook exposed and slowly dragging it back to the boat. I bet I have caught 1,000 fish on this technique in every type of water imaginable, so it is easy for me to see how the Ned rig has become so popular.
Learn how a Florida sight-fishing expert finds big bass on beds and coaxes those fish into biting.
Northern Florida tournament regulars know.
If bass have begun moving onto beds and Tim Mann is fishing a tournament, he will be someone to watch, come weigh-in time. A veteran tournament angler who considers the St Johns River home waters, Mann is a master at sight fishing. He and tournament partners have notched countless tournament wins over the years and have brought some monstrous bags to the scales.
Mann has an uncanny knack for finding the right caliber of bedding fish and figuring out how to catch those fish. We talked with Mann about his approach and how it helps set him apart in so many spring tournaments.
Simple lizards sometimes get forgotten for modern plastic shapes, but to overlook the sheer bass-catching power of a lizard can be a major mistake.
Bass anglers began fishing with soft rubber worms about 70 years ago, before technology, design and innovation spurred new materials and creations. Softer plastics soon made their way into the market as did replicas of crayfish, minnows and the plain but popular lizard.
Spring bass fishing with lizards is a combination akin to peas and carrots. They’re a natural pair. Spring is when lizards and salamanders get active, with the latter most prominent around inlets, creeks and shallow areas, where bass like to spawn, which makes salamanders top enemies of bass.
Do you ever wonder which crawfish-imitating soft plastic lure would work best for the way you want to fish? We’ll look at distinguishing features to help you make the best decision.
Bass love crawfish. This much we know. Crawfish provide important forage to all black bass species, and the craws’ locations and behavior dictate much about the bass’ locations and behavior.
Because crawfish offer such an important food source and because they use a broad range of habitats, countless lures are designed to match crawfish in their profile, action and/or color patterns. Interestingly, not all crawfish-imitating lures look alike. In fact, even if you take a single category, such as soft plastic crawfish-imitating lures, they take on a broad range of shapes. That’s because different crawfish lures are designed with different fishing situations in mind.
Crankbaits have almost become foreign to modern anglers in the pre-spawn in exchange for umbrella rigs, modern jerk baits, or the plethora of soft plastic rigs available now. But the reliable mid depth crankbait is still catching solid bags for anglers that choose to take that route. Bass tend to “hang out” in the 4-10 feet zone this time of year before heading to the pockets to spawn so a crankbait can be a great way to collide with some healthy pre-spawners. In our blog this week I will go over three of the best picks for cranking up some excellent bass fishing during the pre-spawn months.
YUM Dingers are one of the easiest soft plastic lures to catch fish on in the entire massive realm of options that are out there for anglers. The small “do-nothing” shape and action seems to always catch fish when other lures let you down. But, did you know there are several other options within the Dinger family of lures? There are three different types of Dingers with a few sizes to each one.
You read that title correctly. The BOOYAH Covert Series spinnerbait has some new options for when things go “dark.” The new Night Time Series Covert has been added to the line for night fishing or when water gets extremely muddy.
When asking Jason Christie why this addition had to be made to the line, he jokingly said, “to fish at night…”, but after some laughs, he gave me some real knowledge of why this lure had to join the ranks with the other highly successful Covert series models.
The best time of year to catch trophy largemouth bass is when they transition from their winter patterns into the pre-spawn phase. Egg-laden lunkers are pounds heavier at this time than they will be after spawning. Plus, they stage in predictable places and chow down before moving onto beds.
Bear in mind that bass are sluggish during the early pre-spawn because the water is typically in the 40s in most parts of the country. They will bite, but you must select the right lures and fish them effectively in the places where bass hang out prior to spawning.
The new Rebel Pop-R P71 delivers the attributes of the iconic P70 Pop-R in response to demand from anglers across the country.
“It does everything the P70 did,” Arkansas bass pro Stetson Blaylock said about the new Rebel P71 Pop-R. “It’s heavy, so you can roll cast it under docks and other cover and lay it in there quietly. It rests tail down, and you can make it move back and forth the while keeping it in the same place.”
Matching the characteristics of the long-discontinued and hard-to-find P70 is a big deal to Blaylock, because the P70 has been a big-money bait for him that has called up many critical bass in major tournaments, including first- and second-place finishes in consecutive Bassmaster Elite Series events on Winyah Bay and Lake Hartwell in spring 2019.
At Lake Hartwell, a P70 produced a key catch with a “slow motion strike” that was caught on film and has become legendary among tournament bass fishing fans.
With so many excellent lure options, picking the best lure can be challenging. These five lures will handle a host of commons early season bass fishing situations.
Spring is a great time to be on the water fishing for bass, but in ways it almost seems too good. Every spot seems like it should hold fish, and many lures seem like they ought to produce. While just casting your favorite lure close to whatever looks good sometimes produces bass, the truth is that bass follow predictable patterns during early spring, and intentional consideration of those patterns can help you catch far more fish.
We talked with veteran bass angler and lure designer Frank Scalish about early spring strategies and the key lures that keep him catching bass from the time the fish start moving from winter holding areas until they are on their beds.
There is no other lure more synonymous with big bass in the pre-spawn then the suspending jerk bait, and arguably even more so the Smithwick Suspending Rogue in its many varieties and styles! A suspending jerk bait mimics a dying minnow to a tee by giving off struggling movement coupled with dramatic pauses which big bass can’t resist.
In this short blog we are going to give you some helpful tips on how to effectively choose and use the right suspending jerk bait for your type of fishery.
