Ohio Valley Outdoors Magazine Fall 2001

My Favorite Time of Year

By Sam Ward

Now that the ice has melted and the birds have returned, it is time to start fishing. This is a bass fishermen’s favorite time of year. It is the time of year that the bass make their annual migration from the cold deep water to the warm shallows to reproduce. It is also the time of year that you will have the best chance of finding and catching bass. If you are lucky, one of those may be a trophy bass. Most of the trophy bass landed are caught in the spring.

Each year as the water warms, the big females, tired and hungry from a long winter, journey toward the shallows in search of food and a protected site to spawn. Since the bass will be feeding heavily it is naturally a good time to try to catch them. It is not quite as easy as it may sound though. Finding and catching these egg-filled fish is still a challenge. We can, however, narrow down our search with some basic knowledge of bass behavior.

Take for example a small lake in your area. During the winter, most of the bass in that lake will be in the lake's deepest hole. They will be very slow moving and probably only feed once per day. Remember that bass are cold blooded and their body temperatures and metabolisms are based on their environment. Bass are also very sensitive to temperature changes.

As the water warms in the spring, the bass will notice the increase and instinctively know to move shallow. They will not just swim shallower by taking the easiest and most direct route though. Bass will follow break lines, ditches, and river channels to get to a shallow spawning flat. The bass will stop along their paths to the shallows in what we call transition areas.

Transition areas are usually deeper than the spawning areas and offer the bass some type of cover for protection and to ambush prey. A large female will hold in this type of area and gorge herself on baitfish until the water has reached the proper temperature for her to settle in on a spawning bed. A transition area is exactly what you and I as anglers want to find. These areas can offer exciting action if you are lucky enough to find one. One of these areas can produce bass for hours and could possibly hold several trophy fish.

As the water temperature increases you may notice some of the bass in your lake cruising through the shallows. These cruising fish are often very hard to catch. They are not necessarily in the shallows to feed. Bass will often swim close to the surface in the spring to enjoy the sun's warm rays. Eventually you will notice that the fish are not cruising the open water but are swimming circles in a small area. These fish are starting to build a bed to spawn. The closer the bass get to the actual spawn the more protective they will get of their beds. As the fish lock in on the beds the chances of catching them increase again. You will know that the bass have locked in when they no longer swim around the bed, but just stay in it. When the bass have laid and fertilized the eggs they will protect those eggs from predators. Catching a bass off of a bed is much more difficult that catching them from a transition area. The fish are not going to hit a lure because they are hungry, but they will hit a lure that invades their nest in order to protect their eggs. You must be very quiet and patient to catch a bass on the bed. Bass in the shallows can be very spooky and very fickle.

Many anglers love fishing during the spawn since they can actually see the bass they are trying to catch. Others will argue that you should not remove a bass from a bed and by doing so you are endangering the future of our sport. If you do fish for bass on the beds you should return that fish to the water as quickly as possible.

After the spawn is completed many of the bass will return to the transition areas they used during the prespawn. Bass usually will not feed during the spawn, and return to these transition areas to feed and regain their energy. Once their strength has returned, the bass will leave the transition areas. They will head to many different locations across a lake. These areas may be riprap, weed beds, deep channels, fallen trees, or any of a hundred other areas on a lake.

The summer locations of bass are much more diverse than they are in the spring spawning period. That is the reason that so many bass anglers love the spawning season. With a little basic knowledge of bass behavior and a lot of luck, we can all spend a little less time searching for the bass and a little more time lipping those green or bronzed back beauties.