Bass Fishing Hacks
Simple Hacks and Tips to Help You Catch More Bass
What are some of the best post spawn bass fishing tips?
The two best post spawn bass fishing tips are go shallow early and deep later in the day. The bass spawn can span over a few months on any given lake because all bass do not spawn at the exact same time. You can still get on some big fish in the shallows in the late spring because the bass are all on different spawning schedules.
Fry guarding male bass can usually be caught very easily as the try and kill anything that comes near their precious babies. A weightless lizard is a great finesse technique to get those protective bass to bite. Salamanders are bass egg predators and so are crawdads. A Texas or Carolina rigged crawdad is another great soft plastic to use for those nest guarding male bass.
I am a Bass Fishing Charter Guide on the Treasure Coast of Florida. I have been catching bass in the ponds, lakes and canals all over Florida for more than 40 years. In the article below, I will teach you everything that I have learned about catching post spawn bass.
Let’s get started.
Watch this video to learn more about catching post spawn bass.
Where do you find bass after they spawn?
The big females move away from the beds after they spawn to deeper water. Those big girls need to recuperate after producing many thousands of eggs and laying them in multiple nests. That has a lot of biological costs and they need to re nourish themselves and get some rest. Late spring bass are usually worn out and need some rest and relaxation.
They usually are within a couple hundred feet of the beds at first then they often disperse to deeper water. They like to suspend under weed mats, docks and bushes. BUT they are not always out in deep water because the natural cycles of Mother Nature are perfectly designed to help big bass get their energy back. What do I mean by that?
The shad start to spawn closely following the end of the bass spawning period. And for all of those lakes that don’t have a lot of shad in them the bluegill spawn happens around that same time frame. Hungry post spawn bass in the late spring and early summer can be found around the bluegill nests and the shad spawning grounds.
Your job is to figure out where the shad and bluegill are spawning and start pitching some lures in the area. Shad like to spawn on rocky points during low light times like first thing in the morning. The shad will also spawn on clay points in shallow water. Post spawn bass love to eat spawning shad to get their energy levels back up to normal.
The shad will tend to stay in shallow water longer when the water is somewhat darker. The bass know this and try and pin them up against the banks. So you can often find big bass in the shallows right after the spawn.
If you are having trouble figuring out where the spawning shad are, then throw out a spinner bait and often the shad will try and spawn with it. You will see them following your spinner bait and feel them bumping into it as you reel it in.
Unlike the shad, the bluegill like to spawn in the middle of the day with lots of sunlight. That is the time of the day to find the bass lurking on the fringes of the bluegill bedding sites. Bluegill like to spawn in places that are protected from wind and waves so look in protected areas to find the bluegill beds.
You will want to hit those shad and bluegill spawning areas hard to get those post spawn bass on the end of your line. The more beds that you can identify and fish the better your results will be.
Post spawn bass seem to break up into two different groups. Some head deep and stay there while others will go back to shallow water and stay there through to the Fall begins. Most of the large schools will be offshore but there will still be some big bass in the shallows.
In the next part of this article we will talk about the best baits to target both groups of fish.
What are the best lures for catching post spawn bass?
The best lures depend upon what group of post spawn bass that you are going after. All of my bass come from 10 feet or less of water. Usually a lot less than 10 feet of water depth is where I have caught all of my bass over the decades. I am a bank fishermen and a kayak bass fisherman. That is how I roll, so those shallow water post spawn bass are what I will focus on.
Shallow water post spawn bass
Frogs are my favorite lure for catching shallow water bass that are hanging out in the shade of thick vegetation. As the sun gets higher and higher in the sky during the late spring and summer months, the aquatic vegetation grows like crazy. This is a great spot for big bass to hang out in a comfortable water temperature and find some food too.
I only have one baitcasting rod and reel combo and I use it specifically for catching bass in heavy cover. There is usually a hollow bodied frog tied to it but sometimes there will be a jig or a Texas rigged soft plastic of some sort. It is a 7 foot 2 inch heavy/fast rod and the reel has a 7.1:1 gear ratio. It is only for catching those big bass that like to hang out in the thick stuff.
My frogs all come in 3 flavors. I like frogs with black bellies, white bellies and chartreuse bellies. Those are the belly colors that catch big bass. The tops of the frogs are painted different colors to catch bass fishermen, not the bass. Bass don’t get to see the tops of the frogs from their vantage points under the water.
All you need to worry about is what the bass are seeing from underneath. They see a dark silhouette, a lighter silhouette and a white silhouette against the sky background. So go out and get three frogs with those three belly colors and you are all set to catch some big post spawn bass.
The great thing about fishing with frogs in cover is that you can fish them all day long. The bass are in the shade and the water temperatures can stay comfortable for them even in the hottest summer days.
Jigs are another great lure for catching those shallow water post spawn bass. You need a jig that can punch through those weed mats and other vegetation to get at the bass lurking below them in the shade. Get your fig through the weed mats and reel it to hit the bottom of the mat and let it fall to the bottom and repeat a couple of times. If you don’t get a bite move to another weed mat.
Floating weed mats are heat regulators for bass. In the winter, they get hot and the bass will hug the undersides of them because the sun will warm then up. In the summer, they will use them like a beach umbrella and be in the shade closer to the bottom. Either way, floating weed mats hold bass.
Fluke style soft plastic jerk baits are a great shallow water lure for post spawn bass. The action on these lures is superb when you fish them without a bullet weight. I like to use watermelon, green pumpkin and something dark like black, blue, purple or June bug. Those are the only 3 colors that I think you need for all soft plastics like worms, lizards, crawdads, whatever…..
The watermelon color is for clear water. The green pumpkin is for stained water and the dark ones are for dark and dirty water.
The 4 inch and the 5.5 inch soft plastic jerk baits are the ones that I like. You can rig the 4 inch ones with a heavy 4/0 hook and get them right up next to the vegetation around the shallows. You can rig the 5.5 inch ones with a heavy 5/0 hook and get some decent casting distance with them too. The key is to get them right up in the edges of the vegetation.
The best technique that I have found for soft plastic jerk bait fishing is something like; twitch, twitch, pause and let it sink for a few seconds; then twitch, twitch, pause….. That is a great way to catch those bass in the shallows.
Top water, walk-the-dog types of lures like a Zara Spook are another great choice for catching post spawn bass in shallow water. If you can get a cast that is horizontal to the vegetation along the shallows, then you have a great shot at a big bass. I like a white ones the best.
Spinner baits are another great lure for fishing around the vegetation in the shallow water. I like the white ones, the chartreuse ones and a black or a blue one the best. The white one is for clean water. The chartreuse one is for stained water and the dark ones are for dirty water.
Deep water post spawn bass
I don’t fish for deep water, post spawn bass but if I did, then I would only have one lure tied to my line. I would have a shad or bluegill colored deep diving crank bait on the end of my line all day. Crank baits are renowned for being the best baits for finding those schools of fish in deep water. They work now and they have always worked so why try and reinvent the wheel?
Crank baits are great because there is not much technique to fishing with them and they can cover a lot of water when the bass are dispersed over a large area. I use crank baits all of the time in shallow water and they are the perfect lure for finding bass when they are scattered over a large area of water.
How long does the post spawn last?
The post spawn starts when all of the bass leave their nests and head out for their summer living areas. I consider the post spawn period to last all summer until the beginning of Fall.
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