Spring is my favorite time of the year. It’s not only the rebirth of nature after the winter but it’s also the time when bass fishing makes the most sense to me. I actually think I know what’s going on down there.
Bass have three things on their mind in the spring — finding a place to spawn, making a nest and dropping their eggs. Everything else, even eating in some cases, is secondary to a black bass. You can successfully fish any body of water in the country right now if you follow a few basic steps.
First, find the spawning flats. In this day of high-end electronics that’s about as easy as it gets. Look for the blue areas with wide contour lines. That indicates flat, shallow water. Those areas will be where the bass are heading.
Next, check out the deeper water access routes and transitions that lead to those flats. The fish will be somewhere along those routes. Depending upon where in the country you’re fishing they might be close to the flats or they might be staged way out in deep water where most of them spent the winter.
After you find where they are, it’s a matter of selecting the right lure. Every body of water is different. There’s no hard and fast rule here. If all else fails, mark the fish with your electronics and swap lures around until you find something that works.
Do not be discouraged by the cold temperatures this winter. The water might be a little colder than usual but the days are still getting longer, and the eggs are still growing in their bellies. This is a process that can’t be stopped. It’s a force of nature. The spawn will happen, cold winter or no cold winter.
If you think about what I just said, you’ll understand why I say spring makes sense to me. The fish only have one place they’re going to go and they’ll follow a very predictable route to get there. There’s no guessing and you don’t necessarily need a lot of local knowledge to find them. That’s my kind of fishing.
Spring has another advantage that I’ll mention briefly. The fish tend to weigh more because of the weight of the eggs. If you’re looking for a hawg, this is probably the best time of the year to catch her. That said, most of the fish are concentrated so it’s also a good time for numbers.
I’m not saying spring fishing is so predictable that you can catch them every time you go out. You can’t, or at least I can’t. There are far too many factors that affect fishing for most of us to do that. What we can do, however, is put the odds in our favor.
I realize that in some places the bass are already spawning, or have spawned. If you live in those places, what I’m describing has already happened. For the rest of us, however, March, April and May are when it happens.
Go get ‘em!
