5 minutes ago, casts_by_fly said:

@Swamp Girl- if I remember correctly, your water is pretty tannic and you've got sandy bottoms?  That would make it a bit tougher to see beds.  Being low to the water doesn't help you.  Plus its always cloudy and low light in your pictures so that doesn't help to see them.

 

in 3 weeks on a bright sunny day when the sun is high in the sky and after you're done fishing cruise over to the shallows and just paddle around in 1-3' of water with some polarized glasses.  If you have a sandy bottom, the beds should stick out a bit in the darker water. You might or might not see fish on them, but at least you'll find where they are.  I'm sure they aren't far from where your fish are eating right now.

 

Tannic and clear, yes, but the bottoms are either mud or rock. I'll do what you suggest in three weeks: I'll go bed hunting instead of bass hunting!

 

You're right about my fishing overcast days. I don't like to fish sunny days, plus we are frequently overcast on the coast of Maine.

 

I saw someone from Washington yesterday who'd moved here and I said, "This must feel a lot like your home," since it was gray and drizzling.

 

He smiled and said, "Yes, it does."

23 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

To be frank, I kind of feel like an idiot never having seen a single spawning bed in Maine.

My guess is most of the water you fish is tannic colored ( brown) at least it looks like that from your pics. If so you would be hard pressed to see any beds. There is a small pond ( York pond) minutes from my house that was full of bass. The missus and I fished it years ago out of our canoe. Max depth was seven ft. Water was so tannic stained we never saw a bed and yet they had to be there for the pond to be full of bass. Same with one of the larger lakes we fish. In your pond you hit a key, fish hang out under the bushes. Same with York pond. Get a Senko under the bushes or in a pocket of shade and your golden. If you are ever down this way let me know. Who knows, maybe we could meet up and talk fish.

I tend to agree with @Pat Brown on most of his takes. Bass spawn over a much longer period than people give them credit for. In my experience here in VA, they tend to go in waves. We've got lakes that spawn from February through June every year. Once the main wave or two has passed, though, I tend to find small areas of the lake that have bed fish instead of them being everywhere.

6 minutes ago, jbmaine said:

If so you would be hard pressed to see any beds.

 

I appreciate your cutting me some slack. I've felt like a big, ol' BED FAILURE!

 

7 minutes ago, jbmaine said:

Who knows, maybe we could meet up and talk fish.

 

Come up here and fish my pond, which the McMansioners haven't ruined and will likely never ruin!

16 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

Tannic and clear, yes, but the bottoms are either mud or rock. I'll do what you suggest in three weeks: I'll go bed hunting instead of bass hunting!

 

You're right about my fishing overcast days. I don't like to fish sunny days, plus we are frequently overcast on the coast of Maine.

 

I saw someone from Washington yesterday who'd moved here and I said, "This must feel a lot like your home," since it was gray and drizzling.

 

He smiled and said, "Yes, it does."

 

In that case they should stick out even better.  The males will take the mud and fan it away from a harder rocky bottom.  The rocks are usually lighter color than the mud so you should be able to see them somewhere.  With the water being dark, light spots should stand out.  We have a couple tannic lakes around here and you can see gravel in 2-3' of water on a good day.  Find that around some shallow cover or under an overhanging bush and you shoudl find a bed or two.

12 hours ago, Pat Brown said:

 

 

Basically they are done spawning when they lay their eggs and they are making more eggs as soon as they lay their eggs.

 

Maybe up north the bass all drop eggs and then swim around until the winter but I sincerely doubt it.

 

 

This is much closer to our reality than you might expect.  The further north you go or more specifically the colder the water body is, the more the spawn gets concentrated in time and waves.  I think in general, they spawn deeper and earlier in temp than their southern cousins and drop closer in time.  I'm extrapolating, but spending over a decade on one lake I feel like observations back this up.  Basically, the start of the spawn can be from early April till early May, but is almost always finished by the 3rd week of May.  This year was really bunched with a late April start because of the colder spring.

 

16 hours ago, 10,000 lakes Bassin said:

Last year I caught a bunch of fish that were really beat up looking and that’s when I figured the spawn was basically over.
Im wondering the exact same thing right now with the weird conditions we’re having. Our water temps up here just dropped from 67 degrees to 55 in 2 days. I’m very lost. 

 

Your surface temp dropped 67-55.  Not the temp of the water 15 feet deep.  A major wind shift could do this to your lake just by mixing deep and shallow water.  Your 15' deep water might have just gotten warmer.

 

scott

1 hour ago, casts_by_fly said:

Find that around some shallow cover or under an overhanging bush and you shoudl find a bed or two.

 

I've got a mission! You and I know that I can catch bass. Now let's see if I can "catch" a bed!

 

Thanks again for all your knowledge.

1 hour ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

To be frank, I kind of feel like an idiot never having seen a single spawning bed in Maine. @jbmaine, who lives south of me, wrote about once seeing hundreds in his favorite smallmouth lake before the McMansion builders came. I like to think that I'm not failing, but that the bass are simply spawning deeper than I can see.

 

 

You've seen the bass I catch. They just look thick to me. Not bulging with eggs, but chunky and well fed. The ones that were aggressively feeding were the ones under that line of bushes where I caught eight straight. Here:

 

 

The water I fish has a lot of cranes, eagles, and ospreys and the water is clear, so the birds can see the bass and the bass must hunker. One of their favorite places to hunker is bushy shorelines. They park under the branches. Since the bushes above abut shallow water, it's my guess that the bass I caught were biding their time under the bushes until the water warms a bit more. 

 

@DinkDonkey30, I do think that there's more to the spawn than water temps and that your focus on the length of days is accurate.

If they are aggressive and fat they have probably already spawned. Feeding heavily to recover from the spawn act itself especially if they are females. I hit the immediate post spawn dead on during a weekend tournament a few weekends ago. Bass were still shallow absolutely crushing top waters near known spawn beds. A few of the bass were still digesting a previous meal. Easy to tell by the tail fins still showing in their gullets.Those same bass during the actual spawn were more spaced out on beds. They wouldn’t take top water or mid depth lures. I had to specifically cast to them and keep the lures right near the beds. For most multiple times. I fish a very dirty low vis river system. Generally the bass don’t go deep after spawn like a lot of anglers talk about. I believe they primarily stay shallow 8 or less ft of water for the majority of the year except extreme cold when the main river actually freeze over. 

4 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

Come up here and fish my pond, which the McMansioners haven't ruined and will likely never ruin!

If we ever get up your way count on it, and thanks.

                                                                             Jim

1 hour ago, jbmaine said:

If we ever get up your way count on it, and thanks.

                                                                             Jim

 

Sounds great, Jim! I have a tandem canoe and a solo canoe on my pond and LOTS of three-pounders. 

On 5/19/2025 at 6:59 PM, LrgmouthShad said:

When they stop going head over heels for Dior cologne scented baits 

All you gotta do is pull out the Drakkar Noir scented orange dye after that, it's like the spawn starts all over again

Some bass are done and gone before others are even fixin' to get busy. When I see bass fry in two or three different sizes, that suggests it's been on for a while. 

 

Some places beds are not hard to find. Others, you don't necessarily know it's a bed, but it just looks like a place where it could happen. Often, it's at the low side of a small drop off, like a boulder. Sometimes it's near a stickup, or even better, in between some stickups. Sometimes you don't see the bed, but you can tell by the fish's behavior that they must be on a bed. The rest of the year, a bass could just swim off to a different area when you even come near them. When they're hard on a bed, they'll just hunker down and not go far at all. You're right on top of them and they're staring right back up at you, maybe even appearing to flip you the middle fin.

 

When they are eating again, but look a bit (or VERY) emaciated/haggard and look like they're ready for bikini season, they've probably had enough.

On 5/19/2025 at 5:47 PM, Swamp Girl said:

I ask because I've spent many hours targeting deeper water adjacent to shallow flats to hook some big girls with some success and I'm wondering when this tactic might be less successful.

Lots of great info in this thread.  

Now the practical application - does any of it help answer your question about what does it mean to your targeting process?

  For the lakes I fish, not really.

Water surface temps here yesterday were 76°.  Many bass (most?) were in beds weeks ago.

   I caught my 5 best yesterday all in less than 5' of water.  

   Before I retired, when I fished once or twice a week, I always extrapolated one day to entire season or range of conditions (water temp, weather, moon, whatever).  Having fished for 3-7 hours a day every day on the same lake all year, I can tell you that generalizations about bass location and behavior based on time of year are at best only marginally useful.  Mostly, they hinder. 

  With the exception of the very coldest and very hottest periods, bass are going to go where they want to - and that usually means where the bait goes.  We should be studying movement patterns of the forage....not the bass, in my opinion.   But that is too hard for me right now, because preferred meal changes day to day, and besides, like bass, gizzard and threadfin shad and bluegill don't read the same books we do - they just seem to go wherever the heck they feel like it.

  I will probably start in shallow grass this morning,  but my mindset now will allow me to shift to 18 foot steep drops or middle of channels pretty quickly. 

 

I guess another way to say it is that unless you sight fish bass on beds, the idea that knowing if a bass is pre-spawn, post-spawn, post-post-spawn, or whatever hasn't been particularly useful to me - especially given the info offered by @Pat Brownand others above that bass in any given body of water can spawn over a wide range of weeks in one year.  

You folks are lucky to have water clear enough to see beds and spawning activity.  The lakes I fish are all dirty water and have no hard bottom.  All MUCK!  You couldn't wade these lakes because one step in the water and your foot sinks up to the knee.  If a male bass was trying to sweep out a bed he would have to use a backhoe to get through the muck!  I'm pretty sure they spawn on the abundant wood that is present.

1 hour ago, Choporoz said:

I can tell you that generalizations about bass location and behavior based on time of year are at best only marginally useful. 

 

This rings true. I too am pounding a couple ponds and have for a couple years now.

 

If I were to guide you and you were to ask, "Where will we catch them," my answer would be, "I dunno. Gotta find 'em."

 

I just don't perceive the tight patterns on the water I fish that are presented as proven knowledge. Do I doubt that these patterns are found elsewhere? I do not. 

 

The only pattern I've discerned this fall is that SOME bigger gals are off-shore...until they aren't. I've caught five big gals off shore and four at an egress stream. I haven't caught any big gals on shorelines like I likely will later in the year.

 

1 hour ago, Choporoz said:

With the exception of the very coldest and very hottest periods, bass are going to go where they want to - and that usually means where the bait goes.  We should be studying movement patterns of the forage....not the bass, in my opinion.

 

I'd bet money on ^this.^

9 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

I just don't perceive the tight patterns on the water I fish that are presented as proven knowledge.

The more time I spend on the water, the more my experiences run counter to the common knowledge or “settled science” in the bass world. I’m sure these notions didn’t arise from nothing, but in the clear, high elevation, rocky, natural lakes in my northeast quadrant of the country, what I experience often doesn’t match what “should” be happening with the bass. 

12 minutes ago, Jar11591 said:

The more time I spend on the water, the more my experiences run counter to the common knowledge or “settled science” in the bass world. I’m sure these notions didn’t arise from nothing, but in the clear, high elevation, rocky, natural lakes in my northeast quadrant of the country, what I experience often doesn’t match what “should” be happening with the bass. 

 

Amen, brother. I try to apply the accepted knowledge and sometimes I succeed, but sometimes my local bass zig where they're supposed to zag. 

It wouldn't really be remarkable to catch one if it was easy and I can assure you - even with a wealth of knowledge and an armada of technology and state of the art tackle - many perfectly competent anglers struggle routinely to get bites.

 

This is why I try to always smile in my bass pictures.

 

Somebody out there is absolutely dying to catch a 2 lber and has been fishing hard for one and when I catch one I try to remember that even if it's my second one of the day.

 

Even a guy like me can lose them for a week or two around here - it's completely wild we catch bass at all with how smart and unpredictable they seem to have gotten!

3 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

but sometimes my local bass zig where they're supposed to zag.

 

Just when you think you have them figured out.

 

Never use absolutes when it comes to bass. . . . and even that isn't entirely true ;~)