Bass Fishing Around the Spawn

Bass Fishing Around the Spawn - Scott Canterbury

The bass spawn offers anglers time to catch some of the best fish in their body of water all year.

As water temperatures start warming up, bass will begin migrating from their deeper wintering holes to shallow spawning areas to lay their eggs. The good news for bass fishermen is before they go on beds, those fish are actively feeding up.

“Pre-spawn fish are feeding fish,” said Scott Canterbury. “ … You don’t have to fish super slow. You don’t have to talk them into it.”

This aggressive pre-spawn bite allows anglers to utilize baits such as crankbaits, swimbaits, vibrating jigs, and swimming and flipping jigs to cover water in search of fish.

Once those bass make the move to lay eggs, it’s time to slow down and be more thorough in certain areas. Canterbury recommends picking an area apart with soft plastic baits like stickbaits or creature baits – or by covering an area with a flipping jig.

Regardless of the bait you pick up, Canterbury says there’s only one place to go.

“You’re going to be concentrating on the thickest cover you can get to.”

Catching post-spawn bass is very similar to catching pre-spawn bass. They will be aggressively feeding again. The post-spawn for bass also coincides with both the shad and bluegill spawns.

Targeting bass during the post-spawn is often something done at night or very early in the morning with techniques like topwater lures or spinnerbaits. Meanwhile, post-spawn bass will target bluegill beds all throughout the bluegill spawn.

In this bass fishing class seminar video, Canterbury goes into more detail about exactly how water temperatures affect the bass spawn, what baits to throw during the different spawning periods, and takes an in-depth look at how the shad and bluegill spawn change post-spawn fishing to help you catch more fish.