Whitesburg KY
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Gabby’s Fishing Fever

Advice on fishing for pre-spawn bass

Now is the time of year that the lakes have reached summer pool and the waters in the shallows have reached the temperatures that the bass will start moving in and out of shallow areas looking for a spot to spawn.

Bass fishing is broken down into three separate times of the year. First is the prespawn, which is what most lakes are in now. Then you have the spawn, where the bass go on the nest and lay their eggs and have their babies called fry. During this time the male bass, called a buck bass, will protect the nest from fish like panfish that try to eat the eggs. You can tell the male bass; they are smaller than the female. She is the big hog bass that you see on the nest. Then you have the postspawn time. This is after the bass are through with the spawn and they will scatter all over the lake to hold during the summer months.

What all of these times have in common is that each one has its own pattern that the bass will use during that time period. And right now is the prespawn period.

Fish in the shallow parts of the lake that receive the most sunlight during the day. These areas will warm the quickest. After you have spotted these types of areas, look for bass on the nest or moving in and out of the area. If you don’t see much action going on, this probably means the bass are in a holding stage, holding on what are called secondary dropoffs.

These are places like creek or river channels or an edge of a flat where it drops off into deeper water. These types of places are known as staging or holding areas that bass will use till the water temperatures and the water levels are right to move in and spawn.

When you are looking for dropoff areas, watch your fish finder and look for the area of the bottom that comes out off the flats, and look for a dropoff into deeper water. The drop may only be a few feet or several feet. This is all a bass will need to hold in this area.

Once you find a area like this back off some and make long casts on light line in the eightto12 pound test range. A Carolina rigged lizard is very hard to beat. A lot of anglers like to throw a four- or six-inch zoom lizard in a watermelon color. Also, a shad-colored crankbait is a real good bait to use.

Make long casts on light line and try to make your cast parallel to the banks. What this does, by making your cast parallel to the cover you will have your bait in the strike zone of the bass during most of your retrieve. This is a much higher percentage way of hooking up with a bass than by just tossing your lure to the target area then pulling it out into open water and away from the cover.

As for cover on the dropoffs, look for things like weed beds, stumps or standing timber or old roadbeds or the end of points and rock ledges. And what you want to key in on are the edges of this cover. Bass will cruise these edges looking for a meal.

Other good baits to fish in more confined target areas are worms and jigs. These are big bass baits.

During low light or cloudy overcast conditions the bass will move upon the flats and feed more aggressively. Fish the same baits or try small topwaters like poppers, chuggers or jerkbaits or buzzbaits. You can also throw a soft plastic bait like a zoom fluke or floating worm.

Give some of these tips a try and good fishing. If you have any type of fishing question or story or picture to share, please send it to me at gabbysfishingfever@yahoo.com.

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