Spring has sprung and the fishery’s biggest bass have moved shallow. This is prime time for catching a personal best, but fishing’s never a guarantee — especially when you’re dealing with the older, wiser fish. To help unlock the potential, four Elite anglers shared their insights into how they track down and engage spring giants.
WESLEY GORE — RIVER SYSTEM
Wesley Gore has plenty of friends, but come springtime, his favorite is the wind — especially the south winds that make good things happen. The second-year Elite from Clanton, Ala., grew up fishing Coosa River lakes, so he knows the value of selecting his location based on favorable meteorological impacts.
“That time of year, my main approach would be targeting emergent grass like water willow or dollar grass,” Gore said. “I typically try to find [the vegetation] in areas with the most expansive flats — the most access to shallow water in one region.
“I’m not necessarily looking at the backs of creeks. I fish conditionally; I like to have the weather play into my favor, so I always look for a south wind, which is known for a warming trend. That positions fish on north banks, and I like to run as many of those flat places as I can on those north banks, and I let the wind be my friend.”
Along with that favorable wind, Gore judges his potential based on air temperatures. In particular he’s carefully watching the nighttime numbers.
“It’s not the daily highs, it’s the nightly lows that matter that time of year,” he said. “When the nights warm up, those big fish stay up there instead of pulling out every night.”
Gore described his ideal scenario as a short flat adjacent to a creek channel in the back half of a creek. Again, he’s less inclined to push all the way to the creek’s end because these areas get a lot of fishing pressure.
“There’s a lot of [smaller fish] that get in these areas,” Gore said. “I’m looking for an overlooked place where one big fish might pull up.
“Grass is what I focus on if they have already committed, but you can also look for any isolated target like a stump that’s on those flats. It’s not the [specific] cover that matters, it’s the location that makes a big fish want to be there.”
One particular type of big-fish cover that Gore has recently come to value is isolated laydowns. The tops tend to be the money for prespawn staging.
Noting that he likes to swim a jig a lot this time of year, Gore said he’s found that trolling into the wind and bringing his bait downwind yields dual benefit. For one thing, it’s the most natural look, but there’s also an operational benefit.
“Whenever the fish bites, it puts slack in your line and allows that fish to get your bait for a better hookup because your line’s not tight when they get it,” Gore said. “If you fish the other direction [retrieving against the wind], when they bite, it pulls your line tight and they miss it.”
Gore’s top offering for river-system giants is a 3/8-ounce swim jig in a natural shad or bream color. He’ll pair that with a larger swimbait to bulk up the profile so he can “walk it around” underwater better.
He also likes a 1/2-ounce double willow spinnerbait with a split-tail grub trailer and a 1/2-ounce Z-Man ChatterBait JackHammer with the same swimbait trailer. With any of these baits, Gore said that tempting the giants requires much more than haphazard tosses to general areas.
“You can fish as fast as the weather allows,” Gore said. “Wind allows you to fish faster and present your bait quicker, especially with the south wind, because a lot of times, that’s a low-pressure system. The more disturbance on the water, the faster you can fish, because those fish can’t see your bait as well.
“I traditionally fish very fast, but I’m very methodical. I make a lot of casts at different angles. I try to present the bait where I think the fish will be positioned, which would be the protected side, but facing outward.”
TREY MCKINNEY — SOUTHERN GRASS LAKE
When the lake’s legit heavyweights advance to their prespawn staging areas, Trey McKinney focuses his attention on channel swings, troughs and ditches in that 6- to 12-foot range. Often, such areas comprise lengthy zones of possibility, so McKinney keeps watch for anything that stands unique.
“I look for anything special, like a turn in the grass or an edge or the end of a ditch,” he said. “These are good ambush spots. They’re on the edge of something, so they can see anything coming.
“Even two different types of grass coming together can be [productive]. Say you have one type of grass for two miles, but then all of a sudden you have a different type of grass or a clump of different grass. In the springtime, clumps of grass that have not grown up yet are super-good, as well.”
As McKinney notes, paying attention to the subtleties promotes efficiency by keeping him focused on the high-percentage areas. Further, McKinney won’t overlook rockpiles or laydown trees in grass, both of which check the boxes for ambush feeding and warmth/shelter.
“Instead of casting where they could be up on top of the flat, on the edge of the grass [or] in the middle of the grass, there’s only so many places they could be in the clump [or rock or laydown],” McKinney said. “You have a better chance of presenting your bait with more precision when you’re throwing at something the size of your boat. You can fish it more thoroughly than something that takes you all day.”
McKinney’s go-to for grass lake giants is slowly winding a 1/2- to 3/4-ounce lipless bait or a ChatterBait with a slender trailer through the grass. Snags are common — even expected — so snapping the bait free often makes the magic happen. If that’s a no-go, McKinney gives the big girls a yo-yoing action to see if they fancy the erratic look.
For laydowns, McKinney will mix it up with tracing the trunk, shallow to deep, with the ChatterBait or flipping the outer end with a 3/8-ounce finesse jig. Precision matters throughout this operation, as any cast could interest a real arm stretcher.
LEE LIVESAY — TIMBER LAKE
Not surprisingly, a lake’s tall, emergent trees get the most attention, but extensive experience guiding and competing on Lake Fork has shown three-time Elite Series winner Lee Livesay that spring lends itself to stumps. But not just any stump; in fact, whether it’s Fork, Sam Rayburn or Ray Roberts, he knows the true east Texas giants have particular preferences.
“Those big females are going to stage on standing timber out in that open water in December, January, February, and then they’re going to pull in there and sit on those big stumps,” Livesay said. “March and April is about finding the biggest, isolated stumps — what we call ‘spider stumps,’ because they have root systems growing all over the place.
“A lot of times, the bass can get up underneath them because they’ve been washed out on the bottom. It might be in 8 feet, it might be in 3 feet, but those big fish will lay their eggs beside them.”
Livesay said he’ll visually locate the shallower stumps when clarity allows, but his Humminbird MEGA Live allows him to spot promising targets at much greater distances. Also scanning around the boat with Humminbird 360, Livesay’s ready to deploy his Minn Kota Raptors and thoroughly work a spot from a stealthy distance.
“A lot of times, the most isolated stump is gonna be where a big female wants to be,” Livesay said. “It might be in the very back of a creek, it might be in the front of a creek, it might be over on a flat, over on a point, in a little bitty protected pocket — those big, giant bass want to be isolated, so they’re going to pick the best spot.”
Livesay does most of his spider stump work with a 6th Sense Divine Hybrid Jig or a 6th Sense Bongo craw Texas rigged on a 4/0 flipping hook and a 1/4-ounce weight. Cranking a 6th Sense Cloud MiniMag Squarebill like he did during his 2021 Elite win at Lake Fork also tempts the stump dwellers, as will a Carolina-rigged creature bait. Whatever he’s throwing, Livesay’s loaded for bear.
“You want to have big line — I use 22-pound Sunline Shooter,” he said. “Those spider stumps are gnarly. They have great big root systems. It’s not just a round stump. A lot of them are concave, so the fish can get up under them.”
Silence and persistence, Livesay said, are the keys to success here, so he gives his Minn Kota Ultrex QUEST trolling motor and his Raptors a good workout. The sweet spot’s often a moving target, so repetitive casts to a big spider stump is the only way to dial in what triggers that giant.
“You might make 20 pitches until you hit the right spot, or your bait falls through the right hole,” Livesay said. “You’re not going to hit 1,000 stumps a day; you’re going to have a creek with seven to eight big spider stumps you want to hit. You have to take your time and pick them apart.”
CLIFFORD PIRCH — CLEAR RESERVOIR
Calling the March-April period “prime time” for double-digit monsters, Clifford Pirch said success depends on understanding the locations where most of the bass spawn and then avoiding them. Using Western fisheries such as Lake Pleasant, Apache Lake and Lake Roosevelt as his examples, the pro from Payson, Ariz., knows it’s all about seclusion.
“I’m gonna be looking for places that aren’t necessarily your typical spawning areas, but shallow stuff that is really close to deep or steep breaks — stuff that has quick access to deep water,” Pirch said. “A lot of times, that’s some of the best stuff for the giant ones.
“Your biggest ones might [position] right off of a rock slide. They might find a big laydown [hanging] over 25 feet. They might find some floating trash that’s 2 to 4 feet deep over 100 feet of water.”
Describing these giants as seasoned fish less given to long treks than the younger ones, Pirch said he finds them closer to the main lake’s deep water. Steeper banks, he said, seem to attract the big fish that don’t need to travel to the backs of the creeks.
“I think they just tend to own an area,” Pirch said. “They tend to suspend out in that open water near those steep faces.”
Exercising respect for how wary these fish can be, Pirch stressed the importance of boat positioning.
“The less I’m blocking their exit or the way they’d go off to deep water the better,” Pirch said. “I want to get behind them, parallel to them, or up on the bank, or if I can get in an angle where I can use the cover to block their view and just kinda peek over and see one.”
He said clear-water giants are no different than any other spawner in that warming trends crack the whip, while spring weather systems make them hit the brakes. Adjusting keeps him in the hunt.
“When it’s nice, I do lot of sight fishing with a Neko- or wacky-rigged 5-inch Big Bite Baits Scentsation Trick Stick,” Pirch said. “That might be my initial cast, but then I might target a fish in a specific spot with a Big Bite Baits Cliff Hanger Worm on a drop shot.
“The third bait I’ll use is a Texas-rigged creature bait like a Big Bite Baits Fighting Frog to get them to react to something in their zone.”
If that spring weather takes a downturn, Pirch switches to a reaction bait to try and tempt the giants that have stepped back from the spawning zone. An HBH or Spro glidebait in a gizzard shad or shiner pattern is the choice here.
“I want to put it really tight in the strike zone where they don’t get a long look at it,” Pirch said. “I want to surprise them so they have to react quickly.”
Pirch offers this closing tip: “I want to use a rod and line size that matches the technique, but I want to use the biggest I can get away with based on the clarity and the mood of the fish.”
Originally appeared in Bassmaster Magazine 2025.
