Tell someone a Bassmaster Elite Series angler caught spawning bass around docks and snarky responses might follow — such lines as: “Yeah, and water’s wet.”
Well, the title doesn’t always summarize the movie and, when it comes to spawners, there’s plenty of room for oddities, anomalies and downright “you cannot be serious” moments. John Cox, the shallow-water Jedi with a nose for bedding bass, has seen countless by-the-books scenarios, but one of his most atypically memorable encounters involved, yep — dock fishing.
The scene was Lake Travis, and low water levels had rendered much of the shallow habitat unusable. As he worked a line of docks with a spinnerbait, a bass dashed after the bait and then raced back to the boat lift. Moving closer to investigate, Cox saw the fish was actually sitting on one of the bunks.
“The fish were spawning in the marinas over 50 to 60 feet of water,” Cox said. “The [empty] bunks had maybe a foot of water on them, and every slip that didn’t have a boat in it had fish spawning.
“The water was really low, and their typical spawning areas were 20 feet out of the water. A lot of times, fish will go up and sit under docks during prespawn because the black floats provide warmth. I think they knew the bank was nasty, silty bottom because the lake was low, so they spawned right there.”
Noting that his pattern lasted for several days, Cox said it became so consistent that he could run the lake, look for vacant boat slips and expect to find fish on every barren bunk. The clear takeaway: Bass deprived of their traditional spawning habitat will use the next available option.
“That was the only time I saw when they spawned on those floats,” Cox said. “When I saw one run out after my spinnerbait, I flipped my [Texas-rigged] Berkley MaxScent The General over there and she ate it. The next one I came to, the sun was shining in on it more and I could see a cleaned-off spot in the algae covering the bunk. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re on beds in here.’ I caught all of my fish the next two days doing that.”
Pretty cool, huh? Let’s keep the highlight reel rolling for the purpose of enlightening and perhaps inspiring strategic diversity.
Expect the unexpected
When Randy Howell visits mountain lakes, especially in the Ozarks region, he looks for spawning on bluff banks. Not the bluff ends, not the pockets into which they often point (although definitely viable options) — rather, he’s looking for the sneaky spots hosting reclusive spawners.
“Bluff banks aren’t typically your spawning places because bass can’t fan out a bed on solid rock,” Howell said. “You’ll rarely see a largemouth spawning on solid rock unless they don’t have a lot of other options. I think that’s what happens when you get a lot of fish in an area and that area is too deep to spawn down on the sand or gravel; they have to spawn on the [bluff] rock to keep [enough] sunlight on their eggs.”
First discovering this deal on Beaver Lake, Howell learned that every crack or crevice reaching into a bluff wall held a bedding bass. Easily overlooked due to surface glare, such hidey-holes often prove incredibly dependable for smallmouth and spotted bass.
“If the spot had some sunlight shining into it, you could skip a wacky-rigged Senko in there and almost call your shot,” Howell said. “Now, I look at bluff banks as an alternative to everything else. We all go to the easy fish first, but as I start running out of fish, I have some backup fish that I can save for a tournament’s second and third days.”
Don’t pass ‘over’ the grass
Again with the obvious stuff — grass equals bass. But have you ever seen them doing the deed while perched like bluejays on an oak branch? Cox has.
“I’ve seen them spawn on top of super-thick, topped-out hydrilla,” he said. “The lake was down and the grass was really matted; then the lake came up and there’s a foot or two of water over where the hydrilla topped out. It looked like they used their tails to bump out what looked like a bird’s nest in the hydrilla.
“It was the beginning of the year; they were filling the lake back up, and the fish wanted to go back and spawn. It was a lot more choked out than normal, and those fish wanted to move up and they stopped on that hydrilla. You could clearly see the bed on that hydrilla under the water.”
Cox caught several of these grass-top bedders by pitching a Texas-rigged Berkley PowerBait Jerk Shad. Unweighted was the key, lest the rig penetrate the grass and disappear.
Nest raider know-how
Prioritizing a busy schedule demands discernment. Separating the want-to’s and need-to’s from the gotta-do’s often comes down to the hyperbolic but generally understood question: Is this a matter of life and death?
When Cox found a bunch of Chickamauga Lake bed fish snubbing even his finely tuned finesse-y presentations, he took nature’s cue and made a key adjustment. As it literally was a case of (generational) life and death, Cox abandoned the typically stealthy cat-burglar approach and went straight-up door-kicking home invasion.
“I was getting frustrated; it was the last hour of the day and I noticed there were a lot of bluegill around the bed,” Cox said. “The Berkley PowerBait Gilly [soft-plastic bluegill imitator] had just come out, so I ran to my five biggest bed fish, caught the first one almost instantly, and then I caught the other four in about 45 minutes.
“It was one of those days when I saw them chasing the bluegill away and I was like, ‘Aw, I’m going to catch them today!’ but I was wasting 30 to 40 minutes on these fish, trying to get them to bite [other baits]. Those fish had a school of bream around, and they knew their eggs would get eaten if a bluegill came in.”
They go when they’re ready
Florida’s notorious for its lengthy spawning period, which regularly starts as early as November in the southern parts of the state and often stretches into May as you move into the upper region. But even beyond the Sunshine State, in places with fairly well-defined spawning seasons, bass don’t always follow the script.
Case in point: Alabama’s Will Davis Jr. describes a scenario where a bunch of Coosa River bass showed him how little they care about what we think is supposed to happen.
“Typically, spotted bass like to bed when the water temperature gets around 52 degrees overnight,” Davis said. “Usually from February to April is when we catch big spots on bed, but [one year] in early January, I noticed something blowing up on a seawall.
“I went over there, paralleled that wall with a 1/4-ounce Davis Bait Co. Shaky Fish [Scrounger-style head] with a hand-poured minnow and caught a 4-pound spot,” Davis said. “The fish’s tail was blood red. We’re talking about the first week of January and the water temperature is like 48 degrees.
“I threw back up there and I [caught] like 20 pounds off this one seawall. Every one of them were big females that were up there bedding because that seawall was on the west side of the river, so the sun was hitting it all afternoon. That heated up the rock and made a magnet that sucked those fish up there.”
Assuming the fish were guarding beds and blasting big gizzard shad, Davis learned a big lesson: “You gotta go by the time of the year, but the water temperature is everything. The water near that seawall was warmer than the surrounding water, so those fish were ready to spawn.”
Howell points to a surprisingly early spawn he experienced at Georgia’s Clarks Hill Reservoir. Late February’s typically well ahead of the typical spawning period on this Savannah River lake, but Howell found a wave of fish that decided they were ready to go.
“I was on a shallow crankbait bite and there was just a slight warming trend that week,” Howell said. “The water was 55 to 56 in the afternoon, so it didn’t seem like it would get warm enough to even think about [spawners].”
Weighing a small limit, Howell saw others with more impressive bags and decided to spend the next day exploring farther along the migration routes. Sure enough, the minor warming trend sent a bunch of prespawners running to the bank.
“The first creek I went in with clear water, I could see they were sitting around every stump,” Howell said. “I threw a wacky-rigged Senko all day and caught [a better bag] and culled a bunch of times. It was such a night-and-day difference from one day to the next.
“In just a day or two, those fish made that move from out there in 6 to 8 feet of water, where I was cranking, all the way to the bank spawning. The water was still only 56 to 58 degrees. That was some of the coldest water I’ve caught them spawning in.”
Noting that his shallow cranking bite was progressively waning, Howell said the willingness to consider possibilities, no matter the odds, often delivers opportunity.
“You can never count out a pattern or a technique; you always have to keep ’em honest,” he said. “The older I get, the more I realize that, in 30-plus years of tournament fishing, I have a lot of knowledge built up, but on any particular day, the right conditions can trump every bit of that knowledge.
“Anomalies can happen, so you always have to be waiting and watching for it. Never count it out until you see it with your own eyes.”
Spawn bait oddities
When spawners snub your best efforts, success often demands a deeper dig into the trick bag. Consider these Elite examples.
Lead the target: Crankbaits may not be the first thing that comes to mind for bed fishing, but Howell’s clever presentation adds a 3/8-ounce red Bass Pro Shops XPS tungsten bullet weight, held in place by a bobber stop, ahead of his Livingston crankbait. He’ll park the bait near the edge of a bed to create a tense standoff, and, when he gives it a tug, the crankbait dives into the nest.
“This keeps the bait at eye level with the fish until I make it dive down into the nest like a crawfish trying to eat the eggs,” Howell said. “That Livingston bait has the crawfish clicking sound [internal smart chip], so that tends to work really well.”
Spin to win: While working finicky spawners on a central Florida lake, Cox was pushed to desperate measures that delivered surprising results. He flipped a spinnerbait into a bed to rev the fish’s engine for the smaller worm he’d planned as a follow-up bait.
“I ended up catching every one of my fish that day on a spinnerbait — off the bed,” Cox said. “I’d reel the spinnerbait up to the bed, let it fall into it and just let it sit there. I’d shake it some, and when I’d pull it away, the fish would come grab it.”
Surmising that bass in the clear, pressured waters had seen too much of the normal stuff, Cox believes the profoundly atypical presentation presented too great a threat for the fish to ignore.
Tail Gunner: With spotted bass typically bedding too deep to see (except in super-clear waters), Davis is used to blind fishing likely areas. After suffering one too many misses, he devised a clever plan.
“I started with a 3/16-ounce Davis Bait Co. Shaky Head Hbt Screw Lock with a green pumpkin Davis Bait Co. Shaky Worm, but fish would pick it up and move it before I could set the hook,” Davis said. “The first indication is if the worm is bit off right below the hook. Most of the time, that is a bedding spotted bass. They just don’t want it in their bed.”
Beating the bed fish at their own game, Davis attached a piece of braid to the shaky head’s hook bend then used a needle from his earlier taxidermy work to run the braid through the worm and out its tail. Adding a No. 2 Gamakatsu drop-shot hook to the braid, he snugged the trailing hook against the worm and tied a knot to hold it in place.
“When they bit, it was like a stinger hook,” Davis said. “You couldn’t set the hook hard, but if you just reeled into them, you’d hook them.”
The Reach: Cox said his wildest spawning catch occurred when he saw bed fish on the opposite side of a dock. Positioning was such that he had to cast across the structure, but distance helped him tempt the 6 1/2-pounder.
Solidly hooked, the big fish thrashed and gave Cox fits as he struggled to keep the fish connected, while extending his arms and struggling to keep his line out of the gaps between dock slats. Reaching his 7-foot, 11-inch rod across a 6-foot-wide dock left little room to negotiate the catch.
“Once the fish was tired, I tried to lift it, but I couldn’t get enough leverage,” Cox said. “I had to reel the fish almost to the rod tip, but I didn’t want to use too much pressure and risk breaking the tip. Finally, the fish jumped and I used its momentum to lift it up and across the dock.”
Spawning fish can be real head-scratchers, so you have to make the most of your opportunities. And when you do, you should spare no effort getting ’em in the boat.
Off the beaten path
Well known for pushing into secluded ponds, through culverts and over whisper-thin puddles, John Cox feels right at home in the secluded backwaters that give fiberglass boaters nightmares. Fishing the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series from a 21-foot Vexus aluminum boat with a 250-horsepower Mercury, Cox is confident poking around anywhere reclusive spawners may bed.
“I don’t think people realize how shallow even the big aluminum boats float,” Cox said. “When you get into those backwaters and you’re having to troll and [negotiate] your boat over stumps or wood or whatever’s right under the water, it’s so much easier compared to a glass boat.
“Sometimes stuff will dig into a fiberglass boat when you’re dragging over it. I’ve used glass boats in the past and it’s a terrible sound. The aluminum is so tough, you might dent it, but you’re not going to puncture it. It’s like a tank, so you’re not worrying about damage; you can just focus on fishing.”
Notwithstanding the peace of mind afforded by an aluminum boat’s durability, Cox still advises a slow and cautious approach.
“It’s always safer to troll into a place first, because you don’t know what’s on the other side; you don’t know if you can get up on plane,” he said. “I’ll pop the trolling motor, hold it by the string and put my flip-flop under the bracket to hold it up. That’s how you can tell how shallow your boat will go.”
Thinking ahead, Cox often uses fall-winter drawdowns or drought conditions to scout areas he plans on fishing during future spring spawns. Low water reveals key cover/obstructions, along with contour subtleties and travel lanes that may serve him once the water returns.
“This helps me know how to run it in the spring,” Cox said. “Sometimes, I’ll use a stick or a PVC pipe to mark safe lanes so I know where I have to run.
“The T-H Marine Atlas Hydraulic Jack Plate is a huge key for idling into those places. I have my motor mounted so I can take that plate all the way up, so when I’m idling, I’m not pushing down on the back of the boat. I’m able to keep it trimmed down a lot more and keep the boat flat.”
The jackplate also allows Cox to jump on plane in ridiculously shallow areas and blast out of skinny backwaters. As long as he sticks to his marked lanes, he saves a lot of time by not having to idle in and out of these hidden spawning sanctuaries.
Originally appeared in Bassmaster Magazine 2025.
