As a professional angler, I have to be well-versed at fishing just about any time of year. But I’ll tell you, I greatly enjoy springtime — it’s the best time of the year for bass fishing.
The bass are strong, healthy, aggressive; we typically enjoy great weather and there’s a sense of newness. You know, we just celebrated Easter and the resurrection of Christ, which is a symbol of all things new.
That’s what you have in the spring — something that’s been dormant is now returning to life. Whether that’s the trees budding up, the flowers blossoming, or the fish heading to the banks to spawn.
Considering that the fish have been holding out in the deep water all winter long, spring also brings a newness of life in terms of fishing. I’m convinced that a lot of fish winter in places we never fish, so when spring finds them moving shallow, these fish haven’t seen lures in a long time.
For a few short weeks each spring, we get the feeling of fishing a private lake that receives very little pressure. The reason for this abundance is that the area of the lake that the fish are using intersects with the part of the lake that most anglers fish — the shoreline shallows.
Across the board, springtime offers your best shot at a big fish because they’re heavier now than any other time of the year. Also, the sheer numbers of big fish coming into and out of the shallows greatly increases your odds of connecting with a legitimate trophy.
The rest of the year, the fish are out deep, following ledges and drop-offs or chasing bait in open water. They’re away from where most anglers fish.
The other thing that makes spring such a great season for bass fishing is that you don’t need a boat. You can literally go out and have a chance at the true fish of a lifetime while wading.
I can remember many springs, especially back in my college years at Baylor, when I caught some great fish while wading in a lake near the campus. This might surprise some people, but I learned to flip and pitch while wading — not from the deck of a bass boat.
Now, a common mistake I see shoreline anglers making this time of year is standing on the shore and casting into open water. That’s actually the opposite of what you should be doing.
You’ll do better by casting roughly parallel to the shoreline and targeting areas that are less than 2-feet deep. By focusing on this area, you’ll give yourself more opportunity to catch a big fish.
If you notice that during the springtime, bass fishermen set the boats in deeper water and cast shallow. There’s a reason for that.
Something else that’s worth noting — this is the one time of year where anglers in boats and on the bank can get narrow minded on lure selection. For springtime fishing, you can concentrate almost exclusively on soft plastics.
That’s not to say that the fish won’t hit a spinnerbait or a shallow running crankbait, but you can put just about all your eggs in the soft plastics basker. That’s because these baits are a good fit for the springtime stage of a bass’ life cycle.
This time of year, everything revolves around the spawn. In most lakes, there’s at least a 6-week period that I consider to be the spawn time.
During the spawn, soft plastics enable you to get to the bottom where the bass are bedding and make the kind of slow presentation that gets them to react. A lot of times, the fish you’ll catch aren’t necessarily feeding; they’re guarding a nest.
You can’t always see what the fish are doing, so you want a bait that you know is down there threatening that nest. That’s what will entice the strike.
My all-time favorite springtime bait is an unweighted YUM Dinger. I also like a simple YUM Tube, a creature bait like the yum Christie Critter and a finesse worm like YUM’s Sharpshooter on a shaky head. (The latter is a killer bait for clear water.)
I know the subject of bed fishing can be touchy for some, but I’d like to reference an interesting presentation we heard during the pre-tournament briefing at the first Elite Series event on the St. Johns River. A group from Florida State University had conducted a major study on the effects of fishing for bass during the spawn.
The study involved a pair of controlled ponds, one of which they fished and one they did not. Tagging their catches allowed the researchers to monitor which fish were being caught.
The study revealed that, not only did fishing during the spawn have negligible impact on the population, but the lake that was fished during the spawn actually produced more offspring than the one that was not.
In addition to this scientific data, I can say that the vast majority of professional bass anglers go to great lengths to take care of all the fish we catch, especially the big spawning females. From live well maintenance to safe handling, we’re committed to doing our best to protect the resource and help ensure plenty of great springtime fishing for everyone.