Up until the spawn, big bass cruise certain areas looking for food. They eat regularly. Then, the spawn starts, and they stay close to a bed, or on the bed for some time, spawning often (most big bass do not drop all their eggs at once, and many times they will spawn on several different beds). Then, they are exhausted and hungry (just like we would be) and very educated from seeing so many lures and baits and hearing all those trolling motors and depthfinders and lure splashes in the past few weeks. Now, they want a hotel room with room service. This, in most lakes, is no farther away than the nearest bluegill or sunfish bed. In lakes with dense shallow weeds, the big bass tend to cruise slowly in packs of 3 to 5 through the dense weeds where some sunfish are spawning, trying to scare one out into the open, where one or more of the big bass will lunge out and nail the sunfish. This seems to only happen in weedy flatland lakes, and is not really related to the theory I am trying to convey here. In other lakes, where the bluegill and sunfish spawn on flat points and in small cuts in the banks, the big bass tend to just lay a little deeper outside of the sunfish beds, moving very slowly if at all (this is the hotel room). They just sit and sit until one of the sunfish makes the mistake of going too far outside the bed, then it becomes instant dinner (this is the room service). So I contend that big bass feed voraciously after the spawn, but just in ways that make it hard for us to catch them. They have changed their habits in these type lakes to where fishing for them is more like fishing for big flathead cats, you have to sit quietly and wait them out.
One of the best ways I have found to catch these fish is to first find a good sunfish bed that has an overhanging limb that reaches out at least 3 feet past the bed, in deeper water. Anchor or tie up within about 30 feet of the bed, and turn off all your electronics, and anything else that makes noise. Use a 1/4 or 3/8 oz jig, in a color that resembles sunfish (pumpkin green with a little orange, with the tips of the trailer chartreuse, or black and blue, and there are other colors that work) make sure you tie your line to the jig in such a way that your jig will stay horizontal when held above the bottom. Spray your jig with Crawfish YUM. Now, as gently as possible, pitch your jig over the overhanging limb and let it go to the bottom. Reel up and see if a fish is on it. If not, keep your line tight, and hold the jig just barely above bottom for as long as you can stand it. Then, slowly pull it up, a few inches at a time, and hold it each time after you raise the jig for several seconds. Do this until your jig is almost to the top of the water, or if you are lucky, a big bass grabs it. If no fish has grabbed it, and the jig is within 3 or 4 inches of the surface, gently jiggle the bait, hold it, jiggle again, do this 5 or 6 times. This will often get a big one to explode on the jig, or gently ease up and inhale it. If not, let it free fall back to bottom and start all over again, but this time, gently jiggle the bait each time you stop. Keep doing this for 30 or more minutes on the original cast (casting noise will put these fish on high alert) and if you have picked a good sunfish bed, you will likely get bit by a very large bass.
Another method I read about recently, a technique that my fellow Pradco Pro Staffer Alton Jones uses, is to stay back from likely sunfish beds (small cuts and flat points) and cast a 7 inch ribbon tail worm into the area. The sunfish apparently will pick up the worm by the tail and swim around with it, peck pecking the whole time. Just let it swim around with the bait, and if they drop it, jiggle it so that another sunfish will pick it up. Apparently this gets the attention of the big bass that is hanging around the bed, and soon enough the peck peck turns into a solid THUMP and a big bass is on the line. I have not tried this, but if Alton Jones says it works, you can bet it does.
I have came up with this theory from years of observation. This may not happen on all of your area lakes, but I would bet it happens on at least some of them. And, of course not all big bass do the same thing at the same time in the same lake. But enough of them do the sunfish thing to make it a great option to try to catch a big post spawn bass.
I hope this helps some of you catch a huge bass!
Mitch |
