Yesterday i went to the nearby pond for 3 hours, and i saw some weird stuff going on!

 

I saw a few small males guarding fry, so i know they were in post-spawn, but the part that confuses me is the females. I saw a few large females, around 5 pounds, cruising around. They were just under the water, and were in pairs or groups of 3 or so. Also, there were some bass that weren't guarding fry, that were on beds but weren't spawning. I knew they weren't spawning cause it was just one bass on each bed and the beds have been there for a week with no fish on it till today.

 

I caught 2, 1 on buzzbait and 1 on craw. I shoulda had 2 more though but i missed them.. :~(

 

Anyone know what was going on? i though the big females went deep for a while after the spawn and were inactive, not cruising around feeding? Could it be that the bass have been post-spawn already, and are feeding heavily because they are very hungry after spawn?

Not sure what the deal is but definately an interesting observation.

Doesn't sound out of the ordinary. Summer locations can be a long ways from spawning locations. Or, they can be nearby, esp in ponds. Good spawning habitat may be ubiquitous, or it may be more rare and fish must travel to it.

 

In my ponds, females go on the hunt pretty soon after the spawn. I do not know how long they need to recuperate, but it doesn’t appear to be very long. They are lean mean and hungry.

Doesn't sound out of the ordinary. Summer locations can be a long ways from spawning locations. Or, they can be nearby, esp in ponds. Good spawning habitat may be ubiquitous, or it may be more rare and fish must travel to it.

 

In my ponds, females go on the hunt pretty soon after the spawn. I do not know how long they need to recuperate, but it doesn’t appear to be very long. They are lean mean and hungry.

Will the bass be deep in a little while since the water is heating up fast?

Not sure what part of the country you are in but in the east here it seems the fish are in all different phases. The weather has been so unpredictable it has everything mixed up.

In my ponds, females go on the hunt pretty soon after the spawn. I do not know how long they need to recuperate, but it doesn’t appear to be very long. They are lean mean and hungry ... but a bit low energy. They need a sure thing. Anglers that frequent shallow ponds get to see some of them. Anglers fishing bigger waters can only probe with lures and guess at what might be happening.

 

In my ponds I see them slowly cruising for vulnerable bluegills, until the bluegills spawn. Then those females collect around the bluegill colonies. If your water has shad, then likely many of your bass will move away from shorelines, and then appear (more concentrated) with the shad spawn. If it’s yellow perch (which spawn prior to bass and are bottom oriented much of the day) bass will move away from shore to where perch carpet the bottom. Etc….etc…etc… In short, hungry bass follow the food.

 

Temperature matters although bass can handle pretty high temps IF they have enough food to compensate. This is most likely to happen in southern waters with LOTS of food, and in shad based waters with tons of shad.

 

Males of course behave a little differently during post-spawn. Some males will still be guarding fry, some will be done, some will have failed beds, and really late ones will build a bed and try to entice or corral passing females in. These very late males tend to be the smallest of the lot, not having reached adequate body mass until late. Such very late males don’t tend to get anywhere bc the females are done. Possibly in larger water bodies there are late arriving (and usually smaller) females from a further distance or colder waters that may spawn. But in shallow ponds, the spawning period is comparatively short, although in my ponds individual females may be dropping eggs for as much as a month. In a larger system the spawn may stretch for 2 months, maybe more in very long north-south running reservoirs or chains.

 

I have seen the tables turned on the females however, when there are a shortage of males. I’ve seen females line up in front of males on beds. I’ve also seen late females jilted, hanging outside a male’s bed site, he already having eggs, seeing the amorous females as an intruder and aggressively fending her off.

 

Now, this is all possible, late in the spawn. But, is your spawn really over? If not, those may be females still ready to spawn? Where in the country are you? How big/deep is your “pond”.

Different water temperatures in ponds effects bass at different stages...who says that bass have to go deep and not cruize, they were cruizing and obviously they weren't feeding...is the pond deep enough to give them potential deep water access? Also remember different ponds have different numbers of male to female ratios...

 

It happens a lot of the time that there are more females than males not giving all of them a chance to spawn and vice versa...if you have more males than females obviously you have more beds than available potential female mates and you end up with this scenario...

 

You could possibly also encountered a cold front prior to visiting that might have made some of the females abandon the nests before returning till temps return to normal, it could also be the possibility of large amounts of predators emptying entire fish fry's or eggs at any one time, making the females leave the nests with the males hanging on hoping for the odd cruizing female to return to their offerings, remember if her offspring has been depleted she did what nature intended her to do and will leave, this does not mean that the male will leave the nest just because one female got her knickers in a twist....

 

Good luck