B.A.S.S. commentator Davy Hite has a wealth of knowledge. Having won two Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles and the 1999 Bassmaster Classic, Hite has been around a long time and has done extremely well on the tournament circuit. He drew from that experience to expound upon what we’re seeing from current leader Joey Cifuentes III.
We know by now that Cifuentes is targeting bass 20 feet deep around standing timber. But shouldn’t these bass be spawning with the water temps hitting 70 degrees? Hite believes bass this deep are triggered to spawn more by the length of daylight hours than they are by water temperature changes. This certainly makes sense as only the top 3- to 5- feet of water is really rising in temperature. Everything below that is still as cold as it has been all winter.
And even when these deep timber bass do move to spawn, as Hite has personally seen them do here as late as April before, they don’t even need to go to the shallow flats. Hite explained how a lot of these trees have horizontal limbs near the surface, where bass will actually make their beds. The bass innately know they have to have a certain amount of sunlight penetrating into the water for their eggs to hatch. But they’ve found that swimming 15 feet up in the water column is easier than swimming hundreds of yards to the shallows. Very interesting stuff.
