I live and fish in the Southwest Chicagoland suburbs. Today was fishing and caught a bunch of good sized largemouth, but a couple things I noticed is that they weren’t attacking my live shiners. Just sorta lazily swiping at them.

 

Then, they didn’t fight with any energy at all. Kinda just reeled them in.

 

And lastly, they were ALL Very skinny. Like their heads looked bigger than their bodies skinny.

 

Might this be because they just came off the spawn? 
 

Thanks!

Sounds about right. Bass here in PA are postspawn right now. 

1 hour ago, Otter17 said:

I live and fish in the Southwest Chicagoland suburbs. Today was fishing and caught a bunch of good sized largemouth, but a couple things I noticed is that they weren’t attacking my live shiners. Just sorta lazily swiping at them.

 

Then, they didn’t fight with any energy at all. Kinda just reeled them in.

 

And lastly, they were ALL Very skinny. Like their heads looked bigger than their bodies skinny.

 

Might this be because they just came off the spawn? 
 

Thanks!

 

Yup, that’s exactly what’s going on. My fish are just starting to get back to normal. I only caught one skinny one today as opposed to last week at this time where every other bass looked like Kate Moss circa 1995

I'm still catching spawning fish here in NE Kansas.

I was completely surprised how easy it was to reel in the fish. Couple 18” bass didn’t put up a fight at all just kinda drifted in. It was like they wanted to eat but didn’t have the energy to do much.

Sounds more like a couple of ponds I fish that suddenly declined for some unknown reason. Post spawn females are stressed but not that stressed.

It’s definitly not from a lack of food. This lake is packed full of anything they want to eat.