Hey everyone, I'm Pat Schlapper with BassResource.com, and today I want to tell you about my top five baits for catching bass in March.
You know, March is one of those times of the year where throughout a lot of the country, they're starting to move up and get ready to spawn. So it's a lot of pre-spawn and spawn fish. For me, most of my time I'm going to concentrate in that six foot and less range. So I want baits that I can cover water with to try to find a concentration of fish, and then I’ll have a couple that’ll slow down to pick apart an area once I get in there.
First, I’m going to start out with something like a squarebill crankbait—something I can just chuck around wood, grass, rock, and cover a lot of water and get a lot of bites too. Crawdad color in the spring is pretty classic. I also usually have a shad pattern out too. So that’s definitely going to be on the deck of my boat—a shallow-running crankbait.
Kind of along those same lines, if I get around more grass, then this is probably my favorite bait to throw in that time period. It's going to be a bladed jig. And 99% of the time, I'm going to have the Big Bite Kamikaze Swimon on the back. I’ll throw this usually on 18 or 20 lb Sunline fluorocarbon. And this is a technique where I really feel like the rod is very important because of the way the fish bite this bait.
So I use—this is actually an old prototype—it’s a 7 foot, 2 inch heavy power, but it’s a moderate action. This is actually a blended rod where it’s fiberglass and graphite. This is from St. Croix—it’s a Legend Tournament. So it has the length to make a cast, the power to set the hook, but it’s very parabolic. Because what will happen a lot of times with a bladed jig is you’ll feel that bite, and if you’re using too stiff of a rod or too fast of an action rod where it’s too sensitive, you’ll pull that bait out of their mouth or you’ll hook them for a second and lose them. It’s really important that they get this bait deep in their mouth so when you set the hook and that blade folds forward, you’ll hook them.
This is probably my favorite way to catch them in that period. 3/8 or 1/2 oz, ripping it through grass, going it through grass, fishing it around structure. Sometimes I’ll almost drag it on the bottom, sometimes I’ll burn it. Super, super versatile. Typically I’ll have a shad color and I’ll have a green pumpkin or black and blue. I feel like you gotta have both of them depending upon what the forage is and just the water clarity too—something shad, something black-blue or green pumpkin. So that would be another one that I’m always gonna have on my deck.
The next one is gonna be a jig. I have to have a jig. This is a 3/8 oz flipping jig with a Big Bite Chunk. I’ll throw a 1/2 oz a lot too—something that if I get into an area where I’ve had a few bites on my crankbait or my chatterbait, I want to fish this around isolated cover. As that water warms up, most of the time I find that a lot of them big females—they’ll really concentrate on isolated cover, whether it’s something you can see with your eyes or something that you see on your electronics.
A jig—it just gets big bites and you can throw it into some heavy cover. You know, with a chatterbait and a crankbait, you kind of have to be leery around a laydown or stuff like that. But with this, I’ll flip it right in there, just work it through, and a lot of times this is how I get some of my bigger bites. So this I have on a 7-foot heavy-power, fast-action St. Croix Physyx rod—super lightweight, really sensitive—22 lb Sunline Shooter. I want a pretty heavy line because I am fishing it in heavier cover. So a 7.4:1 gear ratio reel at least—because a lot of times those fish, especially if they’re really getting ready to lock on a bed, they’ll pick it up and move it off really, really fast, and a lot of times they’ll come straight toward you. So you need to be able to pick up that line to set the hook. And this has a pretty stiff weed guard, so you’ve got to get good contact with them to hook the fish. So jig—love it, big fish bait—definitely got to be on the deck in March.
Another one that I always have out in March is going to be a jerkbait—a suspending jerkbait. This is a deep model Megabass Vision 110. I’ll typically have the standard one out too, or a variety of other mid-range diving jerkbaits. Something especially if you’re in clear water or you’re around grass edges or some of that isolated cover that I was talking about earlier, where maybe it’s out off the bank a little further. There’s a lot of drawing power to a jerkbait—to get those fish to come out of a tree, to come off of a stump, to come out of a clump of grass. You can get that thing right over the top of it and almost tease them out of there.
So jerkbait is definitely gotta be on your deck in March. A lot of people only think it’s good in clear water, and it does shine in clear water, but it also works in dirty water situations. You just want to change up your colors and go with more of a white—and throw something that’s gonna stand out in that dirty water. So jerkbait is something you definitely want to have out.
And then the last one, which I think—anytime you’re in shallow water pre-spawn or spawn—you have to have a wacky rig. I mean, it’s the simplest rig out there—just a 5-inch stick bait. This is a Big Bite Scentsation 5-inch stick bait, and it—for whatever reason—throughout all the years, when they won’t bite anything else, you can get bites on this. Skipping it under trees, skipping it under docks, throwing it next to cover, casting it out in the open—I mean, I love throwing this just down a grass flat. You know, if you get it on a grass flat where, say, you’ve caught some on a chatterbait, you’ve caught some on a crankbait, and they kind of stop biting—it’s painful to throw this thing out and fish it as slow as you have to, but it gets bites. Not only on cover, but out in the open too.
So this I throw on—the hook is a #1. This is actually a VMC Neko hook, and I like the weedless. I like the weedless with the fluorocarbon weed guard. I don’t really like metal weed guards. I like the fluorocarbon weed guard, and it’s a stiff enough wire where you can kind of lean on them, but it’s still thin enough where you don’t have to have a giant hookset to bury the hook. I always will throw it on braid—typically 16 lb Sunline SX1 braid—and then I’ll tie it to a 14 or 16 lb Sunline Shooter leader.
Now a lot of people ask, “Why do I throw such a heavy leader?” I mean, there are scenarios where maybe I would go down to a 10 or a 12, but I’ve found over the years that it doesn’t matter as much as people think in a lot of scenarios with that leader thickness. And I want that extra power—where if I get up under a dock and I hook one of those big pre-spawn females, I want to have the confidence that I can put as much force on it as I want to get it out of there. When you have like a 10 lb leader, you’ve got to be really, really careful. If you’re out in open water, that’s fine, but if I’m around cover or I’m around real big fish, I’m a 14 or 16 lb leader guy.
That’s what I like to use, and I throw that on a 6'10" medium-power, extra-fast St. Croix Legend Extreme and a 2500 or a 3000 size reel. The main line is 16 lb Sunline SX1. So that’s kind of my go-to on the wacky setup. It’s probably my least favorite to fish out of the ones I’ve listed, just because you have to fish it so slow, and I like to kind of cover water that time of year. But if I find an area where there are fish and I’ve caught a few of them and I know they’re there, I’m going to throw the wacky rig because I know I’ll get a few extra bites.
