The 3 Best Patterns for Post-Spawn Bass Fishing

• Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases.

---

You’ve probably heard this definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s not clear who should be credited with that quote, but I can relate to it and recall instances that emphatically make the point without thinking very hard about it.

One took place some years ago while I was targeting post-spawn bass on Lake Ray Roberts in North Texas during late spring. After enjoying several weeks of excellent fishing, tossing spinnerbaits and soft jerkbaits across various shallow spawning flats, I excitedly launched the boat, anticipating another great outing. Several hours on the water, however, revealed those same shallow stretches of shoreline were suddenly devoid of bass. I found zero fish in all the same places where I’d been slaying ’em only a few days earlier. Despite the obvious lack of bass, I just kept pounding the same areas, expecting them to suddenly start biting. Insanity defined.

Fishing in the post-spawn period is often considered one of the more difficult challenges in bass fishing. Conventional wisdom tells us that bass go into a type of funk immediately after spawning, getting a major case of lockjaw and refusing to eat. Although we anglers even came up with the term “post-spawn blues” to describe it, that explanation just doesn’t add up. After all, the quickest way for the fish to recover depleted energy after the spawn is by ingesting as many calories as possible, not sulking in cover, passing up easy meals.

Perhaps a better explanation for the post-spawn doldrums centers around anglers’ reluctance to change and adapt. Clearly, bass make sudden changes of location and feeding habits. They sometimes happen overnight. So, shouldn’t we change our tactics and plan of attack? With that in mind, I finally decided late in the day to explore the edge of an old creek channel in 25 feet of water. Dropping an assortment of soft plastics within the brush below produced a number of quality bass during a couple hours of memorable action before dark. The bass were stacked along a 100-yard stretch of creek channel only a few hundred feet from their spawning sites. To this day, I still regret not having embraced change sooner.

Avoiding the post-spawn blues is mostly about recognizing when to break free of the tactics that paid off in the spring and focusing on the new reality of early summer. While some bass will remain shallow once they finish spawning, the top action for both numbers and size will usually be found offshore. What follows are three types of locations and the best approaches for turning your post-spawn outing into a bass bonanza.

FLAT POINTS

Once bass conclude their time on their spawning beds, they quickly begin schooling to feed in offshore locations, which can lead to some of the most amazing bites of the year. They also tend to congregate on the dominant structural features in a reservoir, which are primary and secondary points.

Though points come in many forms, immediately after the spawn one should focus on looking for broad, flat points located just outside of shallow bass spawning sites. These points are often at the mouth of a feeder creek, where it joins a major creek arm or where a larger tributary joins the main lake.

Another key characteristic of these post-spawn feeding areas is their depth, usually only 5 to 10 feet. They’re slow-tapering and many times rather featureless, without an abundance of cover. These areas may not seem all that sexy when looking at a topographic map, but the bass will gang up on them in early summer, and finding a couple of these hangouts has led to some exceptional fishing days for me on various Texas lowland impoundments, such as Sam Rayburn, Falcon and Ray Roberts.

Since the bass typically feed in packs along such flat points, not really relating to structure, it’s important to use a technique that allows you to cover water quickly and efficiently. A Carolina-rigged soft plastic is an excellent option.

Approaching the point from the deeper end, which may be less than 10 feet deep, bomb a cast toward the shallower portion of the point to try to identify the general depth at which the bass are feeding. The Carolina rig should have an 18- to 24-inch leader and a 3/4-ounce sinker, even in the shallow water, to stir up the lake bottom. If you stay on the move, working similar types of points throughout the day, you’ll surely be rewarded with solid numbers of quality fish.

OFFSHORE HUMPS

Another top post-spawn area to search out is one most bass anglers consider a traditional summer location: deep humps next to a channel lip. It’s amazing how quickly bass will move to these offshore areas immediately after the spawn concludes. But since the shad they’re chasing are also starting to congregate near the channel drops, the decision to make that move is an easy one for the largemouths.

These humps or high spots may have a maximum depth of 20 feet, with an abrupt rise of 5 to 10 feet from the surrounding area. The closer these rises are to a creek channel, the better your chance of finding bass huddled on the high spot to feed. In essence, the humps help the bass herd baitfish. When you study a lake topo map, they even resemble large dinner tables sitting adjacent to deep water.

The use of both side- and down-imaging sonar can be a huge timesaver when it comes to identifying areas holding bass and schooling baitfish. When large clouds of forage (bait balls) are detected, the bass are guaranteed to be within or beneath these schools of shad. These offshore feeding stations can be true bass havens in early summer. And, if we can be selective and choose humps about the size of an average backyard and found in smaller, more isolated locations, those are guaranteed to concentrate the bass. Carolina rigs, Texas rigs and deep-diving crankbaits are all excellent choices here.

LEDGES WITH CURRENT

Lakes with manmade current, such as those found along the Tennessee River, are well known to foster massive schools of bass ganging up along the edges of the old river’s channel whenever current is generated. This pattern has been a staple on reservoirs such as Kentucky Lake for decades and is especially productive in early summer, immediately after the spawn.

The current is generated as water is released and allowed to flow below the dam. That’s when bass position themselves on offshore gravel bars and ridges topping out at depths of 10 to 15 feet to intercept baitfish pushed by the current. Do take into account that the appropriate bars and ridges are readily visible when studying a topo map and are, therefore, fished quite heavily by local and tournament anglers alike. Despite the fishing pressure, they remain one of the best early-summer options to catch bass in good numbers.

A variety of moving baits work well in these locations, with deep-diving crankbaits, Carolina rigs and 6-inch swimbaits worked near the bottom among the top picks for tricking the bass aggressively feeding along these areas.

In lakes without current, these same types of areas will still produce in early summer, though they’re not likely to host the same extraordinarily large aggregations of largemouths often found in lakes where current is a factor. You should do well finding isolated pieces of cover, such as sunken brush piles or rocks, and probing the area with either a 3/4-ounce football jig or 3/8-ounce Texas-rigged worm.

TRANSITION TACKLE

• Arm yourself with the ideal baits for a post-spawn barrage.

Mid-depth crankbaits made of balsa, such as the Rapala DT 10 or DT 14, cast like a bullet and run true, so they merit a spot in your post-spawn lineup. For deep-diving cranks, consider the Strike King 6XD and 8XD, which easily reach or surpass depths of 15 to 18 feet. Shad patterns and chartreuse/blue back are excellent choices, though hitting the lake bottom with the bait is more important than a specific color scheme. Choose a crankbait that touches bottom consistently throughout the retrieve.

For Carolina rigging, the aforementioned 3/4-ounce sinker and 18- to 24-inch leader work really well together. While you could go with a longer leader, it’s bound to be cumbersome to cast repeatedly. Soft-plastic options to complete the Carolina rig abound. The 6-inch Zoom lizard is a staple, though a bulkier alternative like Strike King’s Rage Craw or Rapala’s Crush City Hedgehog would also do the trick. Various shades of watermelon or green pumpkin always produce fish.

For strolling a swimbait near the bottom, I like the Strike King Final Copy which comes in 4- and 6-inch sizes and is made to sink faster than similar bait designs. A built-in hook harness with internal magnet secures the treble hook in the belly area for better hookups.

To probe isolated brush on the lake bottom, a 3/8-ounce Texas rig with an 8-inch worm is hard to beat. This rig comes through cover easily and gets big bites. The Culprit Original Worm is a classic curl-tail design that’s perfect for the task. Plums, purples and reds are great color choices for offshore worming.

When dragging a worm along the bottom in more open water with less woody cover, consider one of the larger, shaky-style jig heads on the market in 3/8-ounce with a 4/0 or 5/0 hook. These large shaky heads won’t twist your line like a Texas rig is prone to do. The Sixth Sense Divine Shakey Heads have a screw lock to secure an oversized straight-tail worm such as the Yamamoto 10-inch Oki Worm. The huge worm can be trimmed slightly, and the tail is designed to float so it will stand upright while it’s being worked along the lake bottom.

---

• This article was featured in the May 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe

---