The pre-spawn is upon us as the water temps hover around 52 degrees in parts of the country, right where they need to be for the bass to start to push shallow for the spawn. In other places, of course, the water is a little cooler still, and the fish are a little further out.
But the days are getting longer, and even those big girls out deeper are thickening up — the spawn is definitely on their minds as well. With hungry shallow fish and a few aggressive deeper fish in mind, here are the top five baits for the pre-spawn you should be fishing.
Football Jig
Bass stage on deeper rock, humps, points, and ledges on many fisheries as they make their way toward the bank to spawn. If you find a place like this outside the mouth of a big bay or smaller pocket, a 1/2- to 3/4-ounce football jig can be a great tool for getting down to the bottom and pulling a big one up.
Depending on whether or not there’s current present, a 1/2-ounce football jig is usually sufficient in 15 feet of water or less, with a 3/4 ounce necessary deeper. You may need to use the heavier one shallower if there is current, but air towards the 1/2 ounce as long as you can to avoid as many hangups as possible.
Just make sure you’re keeping in contact with the bottom. And don’t be scared to throw a full-size Strike King Rage Tail Craw on the back of your jig — bass love a big meal this time of year and won’t be intimidated by it at all. As for the color, something a little darker like brown or green pumpkin with a few strands of orange works well in the pre-spawn.
Lipless Crankbaits
A lipless crankbait is the most well-suited bait for the pre-spawn. Whether it has several small rattles or a large one-knocker system, this aggressive lure is great at drawing fish to it and triggering strikes, from a foot of water out to about 20-feet. You can fish it on bare bottom, through submerged vegetation and even out in open water for suspended fish that are staging and feeding up around points and drop-offs.
Something in red or orange is really hard to beat, and that has a lot to do with the color of the crawfish this time of year, which are often red or orange in the early spring. However, even if the crawfish aren’t red in your area or even if the bass aren’t predominately feeding on crawfish, red baits seem to work great in the pre-spawn across a wide portion of the country.
Other colors do work well too though. Black and gold is a great choice when the water is a little muddier. And a sexy shad pattern can be really effective in clearer water. Red works well from clear to fairly stained water.
Chatterbaits
A chatterbait (or other vibrating or bladed jig) is another stellar option for the pre-spawn. This bait can be fished super shallow out to about 10 feet effectively, using either a 3/8-ounce or 1/2-ounce. Once you get deeper than that, you’ll need to swap up to a 3/4-ounce or heavier to get your bait down and keep it down.
Fishing submerged vegetation with a chatterbait is a great way to catch big ones in the pre-spawn. By holding your rod tip up, a 3/8-ounce chatterbait can be crawled over nearly-topped-out hydrilla without having to burn the bait back, like you would have to with most spinnerbaits.
And that same bait can sink down and hang tight to grass that’s 5 feet deep if you just drop your rod tip to the water and slow your retrieve slightly. If you want to be able to fish your bait just a little faster in this same situation, you can swap up to a 1/2-ounce bait and let the lure bog down in the cover a bit, and then rip it free.
Spinnerbaits
Spinnerbaits and chatterbaits can be fished in a lot of the same situations, around docks, vegetation, stumps, and rocks. But when it comes to fishing around and through thicker woody cover like brushpiles and laydowns, the spinnberbait reigns supreme.
It’s the side-to-side rocking action and the open hook that makes a chatterbait a little snaggier around wood. Whereas the resistance of spinnerbait’s blades keeps the hook point oriented up and the blade arm effectively serves as a weedguard for the hook. This allows a spinnerbait to slide through cover much more easily.
But you have to make sure to keep the bait on a steady retrieve as you’re coming up to and over the cover — if you pause it before the cover, it will lay over to one side and hang. What you want to do instead, especially during the pre-spawn, is keep that bait vertical on a steady retrieve until you’re just past the limb or log and then pause it for a half second.
Stalling the bait like this, or “killing it,” allows a fish that’s sitting by the cover just enough time to inhale it. And this irregularity in action when the blades flutter is often necessary to trigger the strike. However, don’t let it fall far. If the bass doesn’t eat it right away, return to reeling the bait to make sure it’s upright before it comes to the next piece of cover.
Squarebills
Another powerhouse when it comes to the pre-spawn, the squarebill is a great bait for rooting around shallow and grinding up a big bite. These lures can be fished around vegetation, docks, lay-downs and other isolated cover in 5 feet of water or less. But they’re superb around shallow rock in particular in the pre-spawn.
Remember, bass are making their way up out of deep water to shallow water. While they will travel hundreds of yards to venture into long tapering pockets, you up your chances greatly of finding more fish sooner by looking for shallow cover near deeper water. This is what makes bluffs, points and 45-degree banks great places to fish in the pre-spawn. And there’s another phenomenal type of cover to fish a squarebill on this time of year — riprap.
Whether we’re talking the causeway of a bridge, a dam, or a seawall, anywhere that you can find riprap close to deep water is a great place to look for pre-spawn bass with a squarebill. By positioning your boat close to the rock, you can parallel the bank and keep your bait in the strike zone longer, being sure to maintain regular contact with the bottom.
The bass love this type of cover because it warms up fast and they can move up and down it almost vertically, going from 20 feet of water to a foot without having to swim far at all horizontally. Keep in mind though that the fish may bounce back out deep just as quickly depending on the day.
So, throw the squarebill shallow, but have a deeper bait like the football jig, a jerkbait or a deeper diving crankbait to keep the deep bite honest.
Final Thoughts
While there are certainly other baits that are great in the pre-spawn—like wacky rigs, swimbaits, jerkbaits and the now ever-present jighead minnow—these five baits we mentioned today are the top five pre-spawn baits when it comes to long-standing, proven productivity.
When the bass move into the pre-spawn phase, they want to feed and feed often. These baits all have larger profiles and/or aggressive actions, making them the perfect prey for pre-spawn bass. And, if you’ll add these five to your arsenal, you’ll have something for any water color, around any type of cover, at any depth in which you’d hope to find a bucket mouth bass getting ready for the spawn.
