Keri: That's a bigger fish. It's over here.
Glenn: There you Go. There you go.
Keri: Think I got him pretty good. Yeah, nice fish. Better than the ones I've caught all day. He wants to just swim to the camera. Oh, my reel came undone. Come here, dude. Come here. That was just a happenstance cast. You aren't going nowhere. I had you weirdly hooked, but I had you hooked.
Glenn: Hey folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com and today I wanna talk about spring fishing and kind of a methodical way that I approach it looking at the water column. It's an effective way to really narrow down what kinda baits to use because really there's are times during the spring where the fish are so aggressive, you can actually throw out a paper clip, I feel like it, you know, and you'll catch fish. And so sometimes it can be difficult to choose what baits to use. So I'm gonna talk about the main baits that I use that are effective throughout the spring, from the very beginning of spring all the way through to post-spawn. And I break it down by the water column.
So starting with the top layer, which means topwater baits, and I really break it down. There's two basic types of topwaters that I use throughout the spring. They're really effective. One is a buzzbait. The buzzbait, I start using that as soon as the water temps get in the low 50s. Yeah, I mean really early in the season. You would think a topwater only works in the summertime, but I've actually caught fish on buzzbaits in 42-degree water in the middle of January, so they can work. I'm not saying they're the most effective thing to use in the wintertime, but buzzbaits are effective earlier in the season than you might think. Early 50s, low 50s is when I start breaking them out and that's when the fish are getting up there within that 10-foot zone or so, 10-foot to 15-foot zone. It's not that far for them to travel to hit a slow-moving buzzbait on the surface and that's the effective part of it.
That's the key piece, is that it has to be a slow-moving buzzbait. So I get one that's got larger blades on it that can...with a big trailer on it that's got a lot of flotation to it. So something like a Rage Tail Space Monkey or a Rooster. You know, those are the things that a larger bulky type deal, a trailer on it that also enables it to give it more lift and more buoyancy so you can fish it slower across the surface and shows a bigger profile bait.
Early in the spring, those fish are looking for larger profiles and this is perfect for that. And I throw it in and around any kinda cover structure that I can see early in the spring.
As the spring progresses and the temperatures warm up, I downsize on that trailer and I speed up my retrieve a bit because now I'm looking more of a reaction bite. Now I'm looking at those flats that have milfoil and hydrilla growing up on them but haven't quite peaked over the surface. Perfect area to throw across while looking for those little holes, those pockets across those weed beds, right along docks, floating docks, docks with pilings, especially docks that are on a structure like points, those types of things. Points and pockets, perfect place to throw a buzzbait, and even across the spawn and into post-spawn.
When you're throwing in across beds, you can throw a buzzbait. I've had bass, especially smallmouth will come from 10 feet deep on a bed to clock a buzzbait going over the top of their bed. So it's really effective and fast way to fish a lot of beds during the spawn and even afterwards throwing it... What I like to do is find where the balls of fry are and I'll throw a buzzbait right over the top of those fry because typically there's a male guarding them nearby and he'll come up and crush that buzzbait in order to protect them.
The only thing I ask is if you're catching fish off beds or males that are guarding fry, please, you know, release them right away so they can finish doing their job, during the spawn so that they can have an effective spawn.
Another type of topwater bait that I use is, it's either a hollow body frog or a toad. So let's go on the other end of the spectrum. Think of it this way. Buzzbait's really fast, relatively speaking across the surface. A hollow body frog is the opposite. It floats and can sit there forever in one spot. So it's a great way to work in area really slow, especially if the bass are buried up in cover and are reluctant to chase baits down. You can entice them with a hollow body frog, just letting it sit there and just giving it little twitches and little movements to make it barely look alive.
And you can work one minute to five minutes on one cast, one retrieve, go and past little areas where the bass are or hold up on like flooded bushes or underneath floating logs for example. Floating branches, floating debris, or if they're buried up in the weeds, you can let it sit over the top of their heads and just twitch it and entice or antagonize them depending on what you wanna think. Work it real slowly in order to get those bass to come up and smack it.
You want it to look helpless. That's the key. That's a lot of times what triggers their instincts to go up and crush it. That presentation works when the water temps are around 50 all the way up through into post-spawn in the same areas where I mentioned with the buzzbaits. So hollow body frog is another topwater bait that works throughout the spring.
And then in the middle of it is that is a toad. Toad's got those legs like a Rage Toad that flop around. They cause a little bit of disturbance on the water. I like to use that. This is kind of a middle, that's a slower moving bait than a buzzbait. The difference is when I use a buzzbait is when there's a little bit of wind, a little bit chop on the water to where it's pretty choppy on the water. Matter of fact, I might even move up to a larger buzzbait like a half ounce when it's really choppy to keep that bait in the water without hopping across the wakes. And then a toad is when the water conditions are slick to, you know, a little bit of a chop. So it's a lot calmer because you can work it really slow. It's got that real subtle gurgling noise across the top.
I rig it with a 4/0 keel-weighted hook, a quarter ounce keel-weighted hook with a spring screw lock to put it in place. That does two things. First of all, it keeps the frog tracking smooth, doesn't make it flip over or anything. Plus, I can work it nice and slow and I go across the pocket in the weeds or if there's a log or a laydown or say a stump, something that...some kind of cover, I can kill it and just let it flutter down right next to it. And oftentimes it gets crushed when I do that. A bass will be tracking it or looking at it or you're bringing it over the top of his head and they're like, "I don't know," and then you'd kill it and bam, they nail it. And a lot of times it's a bigger bass during the spring. It's a great way to catch big bass and I'll work it through throughout the entire season that way. And I can even drop it, bringing it across the bed and drop it right on top of a bed. Bass will come up and smack it before it even hits the bottom. Real fun and effective way to catch it. So that's kind of three different speeds of topwater throughout the spring and the different baits I use.
Now let's go to the next layer, which is the middle layer. The way I fish that is with two different types of baits. It's either a crankbait or spinnerbait. Again, throughout the whole season, I'll start throwing crankbaits and spinnerbaits when the water temperature gets in the upper 40s, especially crankbaits. I use two different types of crankbaits in... I'll use a deeper diveing crankbait, especially early in the spring when they're still down deep, when they're anywhere from 15 feet on deeper, on main lake points, secondary points, drop-offs, humps and ledges, those types of things. I wanna get that bait down deep and I want to bang it off the bottom and let it ricochet and get that erratic action. But I'm using a narrow body bill, so it's a tighter wiggle. It's a little more subtle and I want it to get down there and every once in a while, nick the bottom, just to give it a little deflection, a little bit of an action.
So I'll reel it at a moderate speed and just hitting something or I'll just pause it. I'll just pause it. I'll crank, crank, crank and pause. And a lot of times the fish will crush it because they've been following it and as soon as it stops, it's in their face and they gotta do something and a lot of times that something is to bite it. So I'll do that during the early spring.
And then as it gets further into the spring, I'm using a shorter lipped crankbait a little bit, you know, so it doesn't dive as deep, up to 10 feet deep now. And again, I'm fishing the outside weed lines, I'm fishing those stump fields, flats that got chunk rock on them, any kinda cover that I can bring it across or over over the top of it where the fish might be sitting, waiting for ambush. That's a perfect place to throw these baits.
The other type of crankbait that I like to use throughout the spring is a lipless crankbait. I'll use it just a chrome with black back or a chrome with blue back. Early in the spring, I like to throw it out deep, you know, fall all the way down to the bottom and then I just kind of slow roll it. Just slow cranking just to cross those, you know, those deeper points and deeper ledges like I mentioned earlier and as the spring progresses I'll speed up the retrieve and fish it shallower as those fish move further and further back and finally up on the flats where I like to find areas where there's lots of chunk rock where the fish sit up on there, you can just burn it across the top of them really fast and they just slam it. I mean they, you gotta hold onto your rod because they'll crush it so hard. It's so much fun to catch it that way.
For colors is if it's sunny out, I like to use those chrome colors and if it's cloudy or if it's raining out, something like that, then I'll use a painted crankbait. Something's a little more muted, shad color for example, or maybe a perch pattern.
The other bait that I like to use for the middle column is a spinnerbait. That's one of my favorite baits to use. It's my high confidence bait. And I'll use that throughout the year, but in the spring it's especially effective because you can fish it so many different depths at different speeds. I use a three quarter ounce spinnerbait early in the spring with double Colorado blades and I work it the same way I did that lipless crankbait, out in those main points, secondary points, the humps, and ledges, let it fall all the way down, helicopter all the way down. A lot of times I'll get bit while it's falling and waiting to get down to 15, 25 feet and I'll get thumps. You gotta watch the line as it's falling.
But if it gets all the way to the bottom then just reel couple...do a couple of turns on the reel handle, get it up off the bottom, then just slow, real slow, just work it along on the bottom. Sometimes you have to kill it again because those blades have a lot of lift and likes to come up on the water column so you have to kill it to let it fall back down and get towards the bottom and then resume your retrieve.
But I'll crisscross those points and ledges and different pieces of structure on it. But as the spring regresses and the fish are moving up shadow, now I'm looking at...I'm following the creek channels. If there's a big swing of the channel that comes up closer to the shoreline, that's a great place to target right on where the fish can effectively move up and down the water column very quickly.
Again, I'm still using that three quarter ounce spinnerbait. I really like that size during this time of year. A lot of the bait fish during this time of year are big because it's before spawn has occurred. So a lot of the bait fish are...they're really from last year's spawn and last summer and they've been growing this entire time. So there aren't any little fry minnows moving around quite yet. It's all larger profile bait, so a larger three quarter ounce spinnerbait is what I'm throwing.
Now once I get...the water temperature gets about 55 degrees, there's been a few spawns that have happened, namely perch and some other species and so there are some minnows and fry around that the bass are targeting. Then I'll downsize to like a three eight-ounce spinner bait. So spinnerbait is very effective way to fish during the springtime and even during the spawn.
Here's a little tidbit for you. What I'll do, sometimes I'll bring in across the top of the beds and if the fish just doesn't wanna chase it or sometimes it scares them off, I'll throw the spinnerbait past the bed, let it fall, and then I'll drag it onto the bed. And it's something different, especially if this is an area where a fish has maybe been caught several times and they're really leery of lures. I guarantee you they haven't seen this presentation, but just drag that spinnerbait, take the trailer off so you just have the hook and just drag it across the bed. And a lot of times those fish will pick it up because they're not used to it. If you do catch them that way, please release them so they can finish the spawn. But great way to fish the middle water column is with those crankbaits and spinnerbaits.
The third layer is the bottom and there's a lot of different types of baits to fish effectively on the bottom. But I really narrow it down to just a couple. The jig is gonna be the number one choice for me. A jig is effective really year-round. It's extremely versatile. You can fish in cold front conditions very effectively and also when the fish are biting. During that early part of the season, I target those same structure areas with the other baits that I was using. But now what I like to do is keep the jig on the bottom and I drag it on the bottom very slowly on those outside weed lines, those main points and secondary points, I just drag it. I'm not hopping and skipping and making any kind of a lot of commotion with a larger trailer on it, so it's a bigger profile. And I gradually, I start out deep and I work my way shallower until I connect with fish, that's when the temperatures are in the mid-40s up until they're low 50s.
As we get warmer, the fish start moving up shallower and then you start moving shallower with the bait and increase your retrieve speed. Now I'm using a little more hops and skips and dragging it faster on the bottom. I'm covering more water faster with this jig.
The colors I'm using is if the water is murky or muddy or if it's cloudy and rainy outside, I'm using darker colors like black and blue or black and purple. Maybe I'll put a little chartreuse dye on it. And if it's clear water or sunny, then I'm using more natural colors. The browns and the green hues.
And I'm targeting any visible cover now. As we move closer into the spawn, target every visible piece of cover you can see as you move further and further back in the coves in these spawning areas.
Flipping and pitching is one of my favorite ways to catch fish during the spring, throughout the spring. It works even when the fish are in cold front conditions, post-spawn conditions, they'll hold uptight to that cover. You can flip and pitch in them and catch them that way. And even when they're active, they're holding in those areas waiting for baitfish to come by. It's an effective way to catch them just flipping and pitching into that cover. It's one of my favorite ways to catch fish is on a jig.
The other type of bait that I like to use is a Texas rig plastic and I fish it the same places in the same ways that I fish jig. But I fish when water's a little bit warmer, starting about the low 50s because a lot of times they have appendages on it, they have a lot of action on it. So I'll use that when the fish are more aggressive and they're feeding more active. That's when I'll use a Texas rig.
And it just depends on really what their activity level is. If they're super aggressive, then I'm using something like a lizard or a Brush Hog, something that's got a lot of action to it. If they're not as aggressive, I might use a tube, like a three and a half-inch tube bait that doesn't have a whole lot of movement to it and I'll work it slower on the bottom.
But it's so effective you can even swim them back. Say, for example, the Space Monkey, I'll just swim it back like I would a crankbait sometimes and then let it drop in those pockets and holes right next to a stump or I'll bring it by a rock and drop it right next to a rock. And a lot of times I'll crush it before it even hits the bottom. So it's a real effective way to cover the bottom with these baits.
Now I know there's a lot of other kinda baits you can use on the bottom and they work really well. So for example, drop shots and finesse rigs, you know, split shot. These are the things I will use, especially during the early part of the spring and also when there's a cold front that's come through. But it's not something I use as a general rule throughout the whole spring. So that's why I'm not including these in the, you know, the collection. Because again, as I said in the beginning of the video, these are baits you can use throughout the spring pretty much under any kinda condition. It's just a matter of varying your retrieve and what areas you target. Whereas finesse type technique is a pretty much a specialized way of going after the fish under unique conditions.
So those are the ways I fish the spring. It's a top, middle and bottom layers. Great way of narrowing down your choices and being effective throughout the entire spring. I hope those tips help. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
