Bass Spawn Special: How to Catch Bass More Consistently

For most bass anglers, the spawning period is part boon, part frustration, and part mystery. The boon comes from so many fish—including some of the species’ biggest—willing to aggressively pursue lures ,and located relatively shallow, within the depth range where most fishermen are proficient. What could be better?

The frustration is due to the fact that the catching can be spotty during the spawn. And the mystery part, of course, is the enigma the spawn presents, and all the head scratching that comes as we try to figure out what the bass are doing, and how we can we make the catching more consistent.

To shed light on the subject, there’s no better source than Glen Lau (1935–2021), the man who spent more than 15,000 hours studying bass underwater, with much of that time spent watching males and females during their spawning ritual.

Lau was the greatest underwater cinematographer in the history of bass angling, with ground-breaking films like “Bigmouth” and “Bigmouth Forever” to his credit, both of which include topnotch underwater videography of largemouth bass.

More than a videographer and photographer, Lau was a world-class angler who made it his mission to learn more about the fish he loved best. He and I collaborated on the book Bass Forever (Whitefish Press, 2010) containing most of what he’d learned, some of which is shared with you here.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The spawn begins earlier than most folks realize, and it also runs until later. Generally, some fish spawn as soon as water temperatures reach the low 50s. Early-spawning females tend to be large, and Lau speculated that the bigger bass spawn earlier because they can handle the cold better than smaller fish.

The location—latitudinally—has a big impact on the length of the spawn. In Florida, it’s a six-month process with some largemouths starting to bed in January (or even earlier), and others doing later, extending the length of the spawn into June. The further north you go, the shorter the spawning period. In places like Minnesota or New York, it may be over in just a week or two.

The key period in this annual process begins six days before the full moon when water temperatures are acceptable for spawning. For most largemouths, that means temps in the low to mid 60s, though bass may spawn when temperatures are in the low 50s or well into the 70s. Whatever the water temp, this activity tends to occur near a full moon.

At six days before the moon is full, females will congregate around logs or other pieces of cover against which they will rub and bump their bellies. Lau believed they were loosening the eggs to make them easier to lay once the males have readied the beds. This bumping activity takes place for about three days, usually four to six days before the full moon.

This is one of the best times of the entire year to catch a truly big bass. If you can locate a rubbing log during this critical period, it’s a good bet that several large females will be nearby. A good rubbing log can be almost any size, but it needs to have sufficient diameter and strength that it won’t flex or “give” much when a big female rubs against it. In areas with no logs, bass may instead use rocks for that purpose.

As the female groups break up and leave the rubbing logs (about three days before the full moon), the males start fanning their selected spots to build the beds. However, they will stop and move elsewhere if they find too much mud or silt, which can suffocate the eggs.

THE SPAWN

Lau observed that females will go out looking for male partners. While a male is building his bed, a female will hover nearby. Once the bed is ready, the male will guide the female to it by nipping, biting and pushing her to the spot where he wants the eggs to be laid. This spot may be just a few inches in diameter.

After the female deposits her eggs, the male will fertilize them with his milt. This process may be repeated several times by each couple over the course of a day. The egg-laying process will often give the female a bloody tail. Not from fanning the bed, but because of the way she scoots through the bed to deposit her eggs.

When the female is finished depositing her eggs (the egg patch will have a circumference about the size of a baseball or softball), another female may come along and lay her eggs in the same bed, causing the first female to battle the intruder for exclusivity.

BASS GUARDING FRY

After a female deposits her eggs, she seems to disappear from the spawning grounds. Conventional wisdom has long held that females leave and have nothing to do with protecting her eggs. Nevertheless, Lau observed that the females actually stay around and are closely involved in the process. But instead of hovering close to the bed, like most males, the females establish a wider perimeter, which may be as little as two feet across or as wide as 10 feet, and aggressively defend this area. If a bluegill or another threat encroaches,  the female will almost certainly attack, bumping and stunning the intruder until it leaves. 

The longer the female stays around the bed, the wider her perimeter grows and the harder it will be for an angler to perceive her presence. When she finally leaves the bedding area, the female will typically retreat to deep water to recuperate for anywhere from two days to a full week, feeding and moving very little. The spawn is quite exhausting for the ladies.

Of course, it’s no picnic for the male bass, which, after building the bed, will work tirelessly to keep it free of silt and mud. Their bloody tails will show the worst wear from the effort, but they use all their fins for the housekeeping task. If the water is approximately 72 degrees, the eggs will hatch in five to seven days. Then, the new fathers will stand guard over their offspring, protecting the fry for up to 30 days. In a day or two they will have consumed their egg sacs. By the end of the first week, the fry start to swarm and are eating plankton. The male may grow extremely weary, but he will not leave his fry, and he will eat nothing at all while he protects them. Eventually the fry break away from the male and head for even shallower water where they eat mosquito larvae, grass shrimp and tiny crawfish. By summer or early fall, when they leave the shallows, they are several inches long and ready for larger prey.

IF IT TURNS COLD

If a cold front passes through while the bass are preparing to spawn, it will probably have no effect on their efforts unless it drops temperatures dramatically. The bass are committed. However, if that same front passes through after the eggs have been laid, it will almost certainly prevent them from hatching and thereby destroy that spawning effort.

Even without human interference, the bass spawn is fragile. Salamanders, turtles, bluegills, and wading and diving birds all take their toll. Out of all the eggs laid during a spawning season, only a small percentage hatches and the newborns live to reach 12 inches in length.

BEST WAYS TO CATCH SPAWNING BASS

Spawning bass are naturally protective, but you up your odds of catching some by choosing a lure that resembles a natural predator … like a lizard of some kind. There are lots on the market, but you can’t go wrong with a 6-inch model from Zoom, Z-Man, Berkley, or Yum, and this is a time of year when color won’t matter much. You can go natural like color like green pumpkin, or something that stands out, like white, chartreuse, or bubble gum. Texas rig them with a 4/0 or 5/0, offset, wide-gap worm hook and fish them on 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon. This is prime time to catch a personal best, so save your light line and finesse approach for later in the year.

ARE BASS BIGGER BEFORE THEY SPAWN?

Talk to enough bass anglers, and you might start believing that a female fat with roe weighs several pounds more than at any other time of the year. Don’t believe it. Roe adds little weight, only about 5% of the fish’s total body weight. It can turn a 9 1/2-pounder into a double digit bass, but it won’t make a 10-pounder out of a 7-pound fish.

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