It is easy to fool yourself into believing you are a great bass angler when the bass are spawning in the springtime. Largemouth bass are defending nests full of eggs or fry and will readily strike a lure like a weightless worm or lizard cast near them. Catching a dozen or more bass is easy this time of year, both largemouth and smallmouth bass, but then comes the post-spawn, where those shallow water spawning beds become a ghost town. The fishing suddenly gets a lot tougher for some, and it’s easy to say out loud, “Now what?” as you futilely search for bass in places they are no longer found.
One thing you can do is ask a successful post-spawn angler how to go about catching those bass. One such fisherman is Kyle Clark, an avid bass tournament angler and the owner of PNW Fishing Adventures - www.facebook.com/pnwfishingadventures/.
I caught up with him at MarDon Resort the day he and his partner won a Washington Bass Federation tournament at Eastern Washington’s Potholes Reservoir. The two caught five largemouth bass weighing 20.8 pounds. When asked what he used to catch post-spawn bass in both Western and Eastern Washington, Clark replied with three of his favorites: Poppers, senkos, and jigs. All are solid offerings. Let’s break down these choices and a few more for late spring to summertime bass.
JIGS – Jigs are a staple for both largemouth and smallmouth bass all year. They come in many styles. There are swim jigs, football head jigs, flipping jigs, skipping jigs, Arkie jigs, and more. All of them work, and with bass tending to hide in or around cover such as wood, reeds, willows, or rocks, weedless jigs shine. A 3/8-ounce jig is a standard for many types of fishing in both shallow and medium depths. Common color schemes include green pumpkin, black & blue, chartreuse & black, or orange & brown. Fishing jigs in cover like willow thickets, under docks, or in open areas amongst lily pads are all effective ways to use these lures.
SENKOS – The senko is a plastic worm, generally measuring between five and six inches. The nose of the senko is subtly blunter than the tail. It is a deadly offering, fished weightless or with a very lightly weighted semi-weedless hook, when bass are spawning. However, it also works very well during the post-spawn phase. The two most common ways to fish a senko are Texas-rigged, where the bait is hooked through the nose and the body, making it weedless, or wacky-rigged. A wacky-rigged senko is hooked right in the middle of the worm, and the angler allows it to fall slowly in the water column.
POPPERS (AND OTHER TOPWATER LURES) – Early morning and evening hours are great times to fish a floating popper for bass, spring through early fall. Many think you can only fish with topwater baits when waters are calm, but truth be told, these lures are also effective during days when light breezes are blowing, creating rippled surface water.
Kyle Clark prefers to fish a topwater popper slowly versus the steady to fast retrieve used with a Zara Spool style topwater plug you retrieve in a zig-zag, “walking the dog” style. Other topwater lures that work well include weedless frogs (fished over grass, weeds, or lily pads), whopper-plopper style topwater lures brought back with a moderate retrieve, and buzzbaits, retrieved rapidly, making a clatter as you reel it in. Topwater poppers (and several of these lures) shine when fished over submerged weeds and grass, especially off points or around sunrise, near shore.
CRANKBAITS – Not on Clark’s list but certainly useful during the post-spawn period are crankbaits. There are two styles of crankbaits to fish this time of year: lipless cranks or diving crankbaits.
Lipless crankbaits, retrieved parallel along weed lines, brush lines, or rock riprap, work great for bass that aggressively bite the lure in a reactive manner. The lure can be retrieved at a moderate to fast pace after sinking for a few seconds. If that does not draw strikes, try a stop-and-go retrieve, with short pauses between reeling. Bass will often hit when the lure they are following literally stops and begins to drop in front of their nose. “Go To” lipless crankbaits include the Berkley WarPig or the original Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap. When it comes to colors, match the hatch or forage base the bass are feeding on. The one exception to this rule is when the water is stained or murky. That is when a chartreuse colored or dark colored lure shines because it stands out better, a fact applying not only to lipless crankbaits but all sorts of lures.
Diving crankbaits are also easy to use, though most anglers fish them wrong. Lots of people will cast and retrieve them at a moderate pace, leaving them in the middle of the water column. However, depth matters, and diving crankbaits are best fished close to the bottom. So close in fact, that they are bumping the bottom and either bouncing off wood and rocks or churning up sand or gravel. Shallow three-to-five-foot crankbaits fished over flats or deeper diving crankbaits retrieved down slopes both catch plenty of largemouth and smallmouth bass.
Put it all together, and you have several simple, easy-to-fish lures that will get you into post-spawn bass from late spring and throughout the summer. Give one of these techniques a shot, and if it does not work, change to another. Let the bass tell you what they are in the mood to bite on any given day, and catch more bass after they are done spawning this spring.
John Kruse
www.northwesternoutdoors and www.americaoutdoorsradio.com
PHOTO CREDITS:
Kyle Clark with a quality 4.5-pound largemouth bass – Photo courtesy PNW Fishing Adventures
The author caught this bass with a green pumpkin colored weedless jig.
