We’re into one of my favorite times of the year – the postspawn. It’s a time when you can really load the boat with bass.
When the bass move off beds, they set up offshore on hard spots. Now, there may be a week or so from the time they leave the shallows where they may go into a recovery funk, but eventually, they have to eat.
Where do they go? I begin searching offshore for those hard spots on the bottom, such as gravel or rocky areas, shellbeds, anyplace where the bottom hardens.
You don’t need forward-facing sonar (FFS) to find them, and you can see them on regular electronics. I like to use side imaging to scan each side of the boat while I idle around. You can also see them on 2D or down-imaging sonar.
The hard spots show up as brighter spots on your electronics, and in some cases, you might even see fish sitting on them.
Just idle slowly over a suspected area and look for bottoms that show up shinier than the area around them.
Once you find a spot, drop a waypoint, back off and begin casting to them. Now, if you do have FFS, you can shine it over the area to see if there are fish swimming around. If you don’t, that doesn’t mean bass aren’t there; they could be hugging the bottom.
I have three presentations I like for this kind of fishing. I will bounce a big crankbait off the bottom, drag a jig worm or football jig or fish a heavy bladed jig like a JackHammer.
If the water is deep, I’ll fish a Strike King 6XD or another deep-diving crankbait. The key is to get it to deflect off the hard objects. This is often the most common approach.
I’ve also been playing with a 1 1/4-ounce JackHammer tipped with a 4.8 Kietech swimbait. It’s something different the fish haven’t seen much. I cast it out, let it hit the bottom, then start slow winding. I occasionally snap the rod to get it to jump and fall along the bottom.
If you choose to try that, you’ll need a heavier action rod. When fishing deep, I use a flipping stick because the bass will absolutely smash the bladed jig. You need to crack ‘em hard to get a good hook in them.
However, if the fast movers aren’t working or the bite has died down, one of my favorite techniques is to fish a big worm on a jig head. I like the Zoom Magnum Finesse Worm, a beefy 5-inch straight-tail worm.
I fish it on a Buckeye Lures jighead; I like that one because it has a good, stout hook on it. If there aren’t many snags, you can fish it with the hook exposed, but rigging it weedless will still get you bites.
I fish it on 18-pound Sunline Shooter Fluorocarbon and drag it around the hard spots on the bottom.
And here’s another piece of advice: If the lake you fish gets a lot of pressure, make that worm rig your go-to presentation right off the bat. Many of our lakes see so many crankbaits or other common presentations that a more finesse-style approach can work when others don’t.
So, if it’s the postspawn period on your lake, start looking for those hard-bottom spots. That’s where the fish go, where they gang up in the early summer and where they’re ready to feed up.
Show them one or all of these presentations and you’re probably going to have a great day on the water.
