We are mad. We are mad, mad, mad. There we go. That's a good one. Stuck him good. Boy, got a nice little belly on him. Feeding good. I'll take it! This is so much fun. There you go. I'll let you go, buddy. Thank you.
Hey, folks. Glenn May here with BassResource.com. And today I want to talk about seasonal lure selection because bass, they're always being affected by it as the seasons change, as the weather change, and of course, when they're around spawn and around the spring time, their behavior changes and so does their disposition and that's going to affect what lures you choose. You just can't throw the same lure throughout the whole year and expect to be productive every time you go out. So, let me help you out with that.
There's a lot of lures you can choose from, and that can get confusing but what I want to do is narrow it down to the five most productive lures during each of these times.
So let's start off with the pre-spawn. There's five lures you should be using during this time, and the first three is what you want to break out when the water's still cold. This is very early in the spring. You're still getting those fronts coming through, the water temps are, you know, 45 to 55 degrees or so.
Those three baits, as you want a deep suspending jerkbait, you want a jig like a football head jig and also a lipless crankbait. Now I know sometimes, you know, a lot of people think of lipless crankbait as being a shallow crankbait, but during this time of the year, you can jig it and get it down towards the bottom. The nice thing about this is they can get down to any depth, so cast it out, let it fall way down to the bottom and just slowly reel it back in and you can keep it down there in the bottom.
As the temperature warms up, the water temperature gets in the 50s, the days get longer and the fish are moving up and getting more active, you can also add a spinnerbait to your arsenal, and also a soft plastic stick bait. Those five lures, if you've got those in your arsenal during pre-spawn, you're gonna catch fish.
Now as a sixth bonus lure, I know I said I'd only do five, but during the pre-spawn when the temperatures are in the mid upper 50s and warming on up, I would add a Texas rig plastic bait.
Now, as we move into the spawn, this is the one exception I'm going to make when there's only two lures, okay? There's a lot of different lures you can use when the fish are on the beds, but the two ones that work the best in my opinion, is the tube jig and a lizard. Okay.
A tube jig represents a crawdad, those are nest raiders and a lizard is also, you know, like a salamander is as natural predator to the bass and they raid nests as well. So those are gonna be those two that I'm going to have all the time during the spawn.
Okay. And post-spawn, this is arguably the best time to throw a floating worm. So I definitely have a floating worm tied on like a trick worm. I've got a video on that. I'll just link it on down here so you can look at that later and how to fish it. But a trick worm is a good time to fish it right during the post-spawn. So are other top water baits, such as a buzzbait or zara spook. So definitely have those tied on. You can go back to having that jig. Jig becomes really good during this time of year and into the summer, so I have a jig tied on. Keep that soft plastic stick bait tied on, and you want to still have a Texas rig plastic. Any Texas rig plastic, a creature bait. They're all really good during this time of year. So those would be your five during the post spawn.
That's a strong fish. Where are you going? That's a good fish. Come here, buddy. whoa. That's a good fish. We'll take that. Alrighty, buddy. Well, I'll let you go. Nice belly on him.
All right. Let's talk about the summer. This is when you can almost open up a whole arsenal, open up the book and you can throw everything at them because at some point during some day, if you fished every day during the summer, every lure in your tackle box will work. So again, I'm just going to give you the five most productive ones that I use that'll help you out and figure out like during the plethora of different lures to throw. These ones are more universal and more flexible, and you can use them under a variety of different conditions.
So I would break out the lipless crankbaits and the square bill crankbaits during this time of year. Really excellent lures to be throwing, you can throw the lipless crankbait over the top of submerged vegetation or big mats of vegetation, or you have a submerge ones like milfoil and hydrilla. Square bills work really well under woody cover and thicket cover. The bass might be buried up under.
I would throw Texas rig plastic worms. You can get that into all kinds of different cover where the bass will be hanging out in. Also use the soft plastic stick bait. This is universal. You can use them at all depths just depending on how you rig them. Anywhere past 10 feet deep, a lot of people don't use them, but I put them on a back of a Carolina rig or on a split shot rig and get them down deep and use them down there. So don't let that limit you. Just figure out how to get that bait down there and you can catch fish.
A couple of lures I would add to the arsenal would be a frog and a toad. This is the time of year when the weeds get mad at over the vegetation forms these thick mats, and this is a great time to be taking those toads and frogs and throwing it over the top of them and just working it right on the top of that thick cover, and the fish will blast through that to eat it. So it's a real fun way of catching fish.
Also, one of my favorite baits to throw during the summer time is the buzz bait, particularly in a low light conditions. You can throw them when it's early morning, late evening, or when it's cloudy out, but if the fish are buried up under cover, say, for example, there are on these flats with lots of weeds and hydrilla or pockets or areas that's got a lot of chunk rock and boulders where the bass can hang up next to, that is when you want to be throwing a buzz bait. Because buzz bait, they'll come right up and blast that thing. So it's a lot of fun to be throwing a buzz bait during this time of year.
There we go. Woo. He's a jumper. Come here, buddy. There we go.
All right. Now during the fall, this is when the fish gets their feed bag on and they are feeding heavily on bait fish. And there's no other lure out there that imitates a bait fishing any better than a crankbait. So fall is crankbait time. Break them out, all kinds. This is from your lipless crankbaits to your deep divers, cover all depths that you can with these baits, and you're gonna catch a lot of fish because they are keying in on that. So definitely be throwing crankbaits during the fall.
I'd also throw spinnerbaits because spinnerbaits imitate bait fish as well. So those are an excellent bait to throw as well as a soft plastic stick bait, and those resemble some of the dying fish, especially in the later part of the fall when the fish start to die, the bait fish start to die, that's an excellent time to be throwing a soft plastic stick bait as well as a finesse worm.
But a finesse worm where on a drop shot or split shot during those times when you get those fronts start to come through in the fall and the fish start to, you know, bite gets real tough. That's when I'll take a finesse worm and put it on the back of a split shot or on a drop shot rig and fish a little bit deeper and finesse them out. They can be an excellent tactic during the fall.
As the fish progressively get deeper, I'd throw jigs on as well, like a football head jig and get down there deep on that structur that they're on. You just roll it on the bottom, just crawl it, don't lift and hop and pop it in. Just crawl it on the bottom, make it look like a crawdad, just working on the bottom, and that works as very effective during the fall.
The early part of the fall, top water baits like a zara spook or a popper that look like an injured bait fish can be very productive, but then as we get mid-fall and those fish start to die off, it doesn't work as well, but that's okay because falls are a heck of a fun time to throw top water baits. So I definitely even it's a short span, I'd be throwing them during the fall.
All right. So now let's talk a bit about the winter baits. Winter is a little bit easier to pick baits for because this is when, of course, you have the coldest time of the year. The water's at its coldest, which means the bait fish, they slow down. And the things that the bass are foraging on are moving slowly and they're not as active. So you got to, you know, mimic the bait fish that's out there and mimic the forage that they're going after, and so slower moving baits is the key to that.
So the top baits that I would pick for this time of year is like a four-inch finesse worm. Works really well behind a drop shot or a split shot pulled real slowly through the water column. A football jig works really well, just slowly crawling on the bottom. It looks like a slow moving lethargic crawdad.
I know a lot of people think crawdads hibernate during the winter. They don't. They're actually out there moving around, but very slowly. So just crawl a football jig on the bottom and you get that action.
A quarter ounce blade bait works really well. Just jigging it off the bottom. It looks like a dying bait fish. When the water temperatures get into the 40s and the lower they go, mid 40s and lower, the more bait fish start dying off. And so a quarter ounce blade bait works really well under those situations.
Hair jigs rule the world during this time of year. Hair jigs can work year round, but hair jigs are exceptionally good during the winter time. You just barely have to move them, and the hair just undulates and it looks like it's breathing and that that's all you need. Just need to move it just very, very little and let the hair do the work and bass just can't resist it.
And then finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention throwing a suspending jerk bait. Those work extremely well during this time of year, because again, bait fish are lethargic. Some of them are disorientated because of the cold weather and the cold water. You throw a suspending jerk bait and the key here with fishing it is letting long, long pauses in between so that it looks like it's barely alive. And then just give it slight jerks in between. You're not going to work at real hard jerks and short pauses, but rather the opposite, and you're going to have a lot more success.
And so those are my seasonal lures selections, as it goes through the entire year, at least the top ones. And I hope that helps you figure out what you want to use, and you catch a lot of fish this year. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
