Seasonal Lure Choices

When anglers talk tactics, one question often arises, whether the gathering is on a family vacation or around the tournament weigh-in stage. What size lure should I use? New anglers are puzzled by countless choices offered in catalogs, shops, and webstores. Even grizzled veterans can be bamboozled by their own vast collections of crankbaits, topwaters, and swimbaits.

After decades of fishing and studying aspects of bass biology, I offer one logical step in this decision process: Effective presentations start with understanding the seasonal cycles of bass and their food.

Bass eat whatever they can catch, with little discrimination except for times of target fixation, when a particular prey is so abundant that fish key on a visual or behavioral clue that is prey-specific. Bass fixated in this manner typically are “schoolies” working large schools of identical-sized shad, shiners, or other pelagic preyfish. Most other prey types are never so abundant in any one place or at any given time.

Size of the most abundant prey fluctuates in an annual cycle. As a result, there are seasonal differences in the size of prey that bass routinely catch and eat.

Winter

Once winter arrives, most available prey are adult-sized for their species because most small prey have been eaten. Surviving preyfish tend to be big, fast, wary, and experienced with predators. Prey are slowed by lower metabolism in winter but so are bass, so large prey become more difficult for bass to catch. Bass strike large prey only if they instinctively consider it both catchable and vulnerable.

Except for the most actively feeding fish, bass have a small strike window during winter, a limited range for pursuing and striking prey. As a result, anglers often must place large lures very close to individual bass to draw strikes in cold water. On the other hand, small and slow-moving lures typically work better, since they seem to bass more vulnerable and easily catchable.

But when you find concentrations of bass, multiple casts with large lures can be extremely effective, since your odds of placing a lure in the strike windows of individual fish are excellent. Examples include working large groups of deep bass with big, deep-diving crankbaits, outsize spinnerbaits, swimbaits, or spoons.

Late Winter and Early Spring

During this period, bass are increasingly active, but even fewer small prey are available, since last year’s crop of young preyfish has either grown up or been eaten. Bass activated by increasing water temperature and the need to gain spawning condition have a strong need for food. As a result, they prefer large preyfish and crayfish, if they can find them.

But prey of any size are scarce at this time. This scenario typically translates to good fishing, because bass now are actively hunting food for longer periods. Big jigs, cranks, spinnerbaits, and jerkbaits are optimal lures for covering water to find numbers of scattered bass, or the large concentrations that sometimes occur at this time. This condition prevails until fish head to spawning areas.

Spawn Period

Once bass are nesting, defense not hunger is their primary motive to strike. Prey and nest-raiders remain relatively large, and the most threatening raiders are the largest. As a result, bed fishermen do well with large artificials that imitate nest-raiders.

Postspawn Period

Once off the nest, bass face a modified situation. Few small preyfish remain but they’re tightly grouped, since they’re also moving shallow to spawn. Crayfish move shallow, too, as warmer water also increases their metabolism, and they find live and dead prey most abundant in the shallows.

Even bass with deep home ranges tend to remain shallow for several weeks as long as sunfish or shad are spawning. Large lures continue to work, but smaller, slower baits are more likely to interest bass that are still recovering from the spawning rigors and not yet ready to chase prey. The early Postspawn Period can require considerable experimentation with lure size, color, location, and presentation.