Spring Bass: These 5 Baits Cover Everything

Man, in the springtime, there's so many different baits. You can throw soft plastic hard baits and they're coming so many different sizes and colors and it gets dizzy and array.

Let's just talk about hard baits here for a minute. I mean, they come in so many different vibrations and actions and different types, and a lot of them will work this time of the year.

Spring, especially from when it's really cold from the ice out all the way up until summer time, There's hard baits you can use throughout that period, but there's five here that I think work pretty much throughout the entire spring.

So let's talk about those starting with a spinner bait. The spinner bait is extremely versatile. If you guys know me, you know I've I fished spinner baits year round. They're that versatile. So spring is no exception.

Springtime for me is you know when it's cold out, when it's the temperatures on the upper 40s low 50s. I'm starting off with a heavy spinner bait like a three quarter oz white spinner bait with. A Colorado blade something, a big thumper that can. I can reel really slow and put up that vibration and that tends to work really well in those colder water temps, especially if you're fishing ledges or drop offs or deep points.

You can let it fall and just helicopters down the body fall straight down and the blade just helicopters and a lot of times that is actually the pattern you can catch fish doing that. I was fishing a partner one time and I caught 3 fish in a row 3 casts in a row doing that off a point and he he didn't have a spinner bait tied on he was still busy trying to. Tie on a spinner bait. And I got 3 before he even got done doing that. So it can be really, really productive in that early spring.

And now as it warms up, you can split, flip over to Indiana blades or Willow leaf blades, especially tandem. And that's going to get a lot of action, a lot of movement, and it's going to put off a lot of vibration. And you can speed it up. And you can fish shallower with that.

And because of the weedless nature of the spinnerbait, you can fish it around weeds and bushes and timber without fear of getting it hung up around weeds. It works. It's very, very flexible.

Anything as it warms up and gets even more active into May and later. Again, fishing them fast right over the surface of weeds and along these areas where bass are hanging out. Can be extremely productive.

So spinnerbait is like one of my best choices throughout the whole season because it's so flexible. Just a white spinner bait sometimes white and chartreuse if there's some stain to it or if I'm fishing smallies.

The other thing is is the wire size I look for and a lot of guys will get the the thicker wire because it lasts longer and it doesn't break, but that really dampens that vibration of that blade puts off and that's a problem I the vibration is is the key characteristic of which. Generates those strikes, so in my mind I get a smaller diameter wire and that's has a lot of vibration to it and makes that blades just thump, thump, thump, thump up and put off a lot of action.

The downside of that is eventually the spinner bait is going to break. That's just all the nature to it. That's what happens. I usually break 3 to 5 spinner baits a year. That's normal.

But you think about it a spinner bait costs what 5-6 bucks, maybe a little bit more than that, but it costs about the same or maybe less than a bag of plastics. And once you burn through the plastics, you're done. You have to buy a new bag well. You burn through those as fast, if not faster than you would. The spinnerbaits with a thinner wire.

So it's just the cost of doing business guys. That's just the nature of it. You want to catch more fish, get a spinner bait with thinner diameter of wire.

Now the next bait that works throughout the spring is the jerk bait and the jerkbait. A lot of guys, you know, they, they relate jerkbaits to early spring, like late winter actually, when the temps get above 45 and into the temps get in the low fifties. They consider that like jerkbait time and it is, don't get me wrong, jerkbaits work really well, particularly the suspending, the deep diving suspending jerkbaits, it's hard to beat during that time of year.

You fish them over long tapering points over humps. Ledges, Creek channels, those secondary points leading up to the areas where the bass will eventually spawn, Those are the things that I would be targeting. Rock piles.

Just get that bait down to that depth where those fish are at and let it sit and bake. Just not just motionless and hang out. Then give it a little nudge, a little bit of movement to make it look alive and then let it sit again.

And that patience really pays off because eventually a bass is going to come up and nail it. So you better be ready for it. You'll get bored after a while, but eventually. Basil hit it. We're not expecting it.

So deep diving, suspending jerk baits early in the spring but then as it spring moves on. You get shallower diving jerk baits and they don't have to necessarily suspend. They can float up a little bit.

They give a little more action because now your cadence speeds up and the cadence is, you know, your twitches, how many twitches you do and how long your pauses are in between twitches. You have to experiment with that. There's no real recipe for that.

But as it warms up, you have faster twitches and harder twitches and and lesser pauses. And you can even get to the point where you're mid to late spring where you just twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch as you're reeling it all the way back to you without any pauses. At all.

Another way to fish them is get the floating type like a floating Rapala and they only, yeah they only dive down about one or two feet deep, maybe 3 at the most.

But you twitch, twitch, twitch and let it flow back up and then let it sit, let it float on the surface, don't even move and it just sits there and sometimes just motionless. A bass will come up and inhale it.

I caught an 8 pounder once doing that out of a he was under a dock. I just threw it alongside the dock, twitch, twitch, twitch and let it float back up and let it sit there and the bass couldn't stand anymore came out and inhale it. Hoo that was fun, but that can be a real productive way to catch and fish, you know, bass, especially with the jerk baits over weed beds after the bass have spawned jerk baits.

That's what a lot of times where the fry will go and you got fry guarders the in and around the weeds and you put a jerk bait through that ball of fry and the bass will just annihilate it. So jerk baits work really well throughout the throughout the spring.

Couple things about them. One of them is you want to have them on a on a snap. Or on a split ring. That way gives the jerk bait a enough mood. Gives that freedom to move and wiggle around. Don't don't tie directly to the eye of the jerkbait you get actually going to dampen its movement and it's not going to be as effective. So that's one tip.

The other one is you want a jerkbait that runs true, that comes straight to you sometimes out-of-the-box that goes sideways on you. And those are really hard to work. They don't, they're not as effective.

I haven't really figured out a good way to get him to run straight because the eye is the way it is. Bending the eye doesn't seem to help that much If it doesn't run straight. I just put it down and get a different jerkbait. Just it's, I believe in it that much.

You want to jerkbait that runs true because then he gets that full wiggle action and you can, you know, jerk, pause, jerk. Pause.

You get all of the movement that you need with a jerk bait that runs true, so make sure you've got that in your arsenal.

The next bait to have in your arsenal is a square bill crankbait. And there's a reason why they're so popular, especially in the spring is their dynamite. They catch fish.

You can fish them pretty much in anything except for vegetation. And they really are designed for hardcover like lay downs and stomps and wood and riprap rocks cuz that lip. What it does is that it it's designed to hit and deflect off those hard objects and that deflection is what? Creates a strike, a reaction strike.

So you, you want to intentionally bounce it into things. OK, that's the idea. You're ricocheting this thing.

This is why they oftentimes have a little wider body because that wider body protects the hooks behind it. You'd be surprised at how weedless they are. Doesn't mean you won't get snagged, but you won't get as snagged as much as you think you would with a treble hook.

And they, their action, their vibration, they put off a lot of movement, a lot of vibration and a lot of action and that just triggers strikes.

So, especially effective when the bass are up less than 5 feet of water during that springtime, both pre-spawn and post-spawn.

Couple things about them. Make sure that you've got yourself a lure retriever. Like I said their weedless, but it doesn't mean they will never get snagged and sometimes you get hooked down there and you want to get that that lure back make sure you got some lure retrievers with you so you can get that lure back.

The other thing back to like it was at the drink baits is that you want it to run true most of the time. Now the cool thing about these is that the. Where it's at is if it starts to go off this way, you can bend the line, tie back over this way with a pair of pliers and it'll run straight. That's cool.

But also say you want it to run into dock pilings. You got a dock like this and you cast and you want to run along that dock. But you wanted to bounce into the dock pilings, you can bend that line, tie a bit so it runs a little bit to the side and bounces off those those boat docks and off those pilings. That can be a very effective way of fishing them.

One of the things also the characteristics when you're looking for Guinness square bells, you want a bill that's almost straight down from the body, one that's kind of at an angle isn't going to put off as much vibration. And that's the key characteristics of a square bell is that much vibration it puts off.

So the more that the bills straight down from the body. The more it's going to wiggle back and forth and put back, put forth that action and that is the type of bait that you want to be throwing in the spring.

The next bait is one of my favorites and that is a lipless crankbait. Man, I've been throwing those for a long time. I'm telling you, I actually started throwing them when Hedon came out with, I think it was called the Sonic or the Sonar. One of the, I think it was, I think it might have been called the Sonar.

That was well before Rat-L-Trap was around. And there's a dynamite bait in the spring, especially when the water temps just peak past 50°. Break out those lift us crankbaits.

That tight wiggle. It's, I don't know, it is something that triggers the bass in the springtime. And you can fish these baits at different depths and different speeds. This is what makes them so versatile.

You can fish them off of, you know, main lake points, humps, ridges, ledges, Creek channels that are leading up in the spawning flats early in the spring. Those are areas that would target.

You can get it down to the depth that you want it to be and then reel it along at a slow or a quick pace just so it hugs the bottom. And that can be dynamite way efficient as the fish get up shallower and spring moves on.

You can now quicken the pace you can officially a little bit. Shallower you can fish with more speed and across weed beds along docks.

One of the things I like to do is experiment with cadence. So bringing it back really fast is good. Bring it back even faster is gooder. I find sometimes that the bass you just can't reel it fast enough. It's like you cannot reel it too fast and they'll they'll just nihilate it so fast.

Fast retrieves with a lipless crankbait can be really good on the other hand. Giving it a yo-yo type or stop and go retrieve. Retrieving it back and then pausing it, let it flutter down and then bring it back up again and bring it. Bring it back up the water column and then pause and let it flutter back down and reel it back up again.

Sometimes when you kill it and it starts to flutter back down, that's when the bass hit it. OK, that can be really good. When the bass and the pre spawn period when they're not as aggressive, that can be a way of triggering those bites. So try that.

Couple things about these lift the strength baits is color. Color I would get the Chrome. Chrome with blue, Chrome with black back. Those work exceptionally well in clear water or for smallies. Smallies just crush it. I don't know why, but they do.

You’ve just got to have yourself some shad color like Tennessee shad or Sexy shad. And then I like to have crawdad collars, 3 main crawdad colors in the spring. This is the red, green and brown crawdads.

The Reds work particularly well when the fish are less than 3 feet of water, 4 feet of water. And then I use the other colors when they're deeper, carrot adds.

They start to get more active when the water temperature gets in the low fifties and the bass start to change their diet from shad or bait fish to crawdad. So flipping over that color, crawdad pattern in the mid 50s. Can be really, really good all the way through the spring and into the summer actually, because Karot ads are just a staple of the bass diet, so make sure you have those colors handy.

One of the things about. Lift this crankbaits is you would think the ones that make the most amount of noise are the most productive. It's not always the case.

I've actually caught a lot of bass on lipless crankbaits that don't have any rattles at all. Some of them are made out of hard plastic or I mean soft plastic material or like I mentioned the hidden that didn't have any rebels in if I remember correctly.

Just that through the water is all they need. They don't need those BBS and sound in it.

One of the key things about it is you want to have hooks like a wide gap hook on it. If it doesn't have a wide gap hook, then put them on it because a lot of times the bass will slap at this bait and you won't hook them unless you got a wide gap hook.

So you'll catch more bass with a wide gap treble hook on it than you would with the stock round Bandits. Just a little tip.

So lift those crank baits. Try those out this spring.

Now the last hard bait for spring that I used throughout spring is a popper. Even when it's cold out. You know a lot of people they I think there's a misconception that the top water bite doesn't really happen till after the spawn and it's true is the top water bite really kicks on after the spawn but. Early pre spawn when the water temps are in the low fifties. Eat top water bite can still be killer.

You get these bass that come up, they've been deep all winter long and they come up shallow and this is their first time up shallow water and they're susceptible to these lures. They're not used to seeing them.

And so a little popper, you, you a smaller, smaller bait fish profile popper that puts out subtle action, just bloop it. Don't put a lot of action into it. Just bloop, bloop and let it long pauses in between.

That's what works in the early spring and the water temps are really cold around, you know. You know, points. 11 around points, especially points of scattered rock and boulder or lay downs in them, or patches of weeds. Rock piles, humps ridges, Creek channels right over the top of it.

Just bloop, bloop and let it pause.

Now when the water temperature warms up and the bass are up in less than 5 feet of water, then anything is fair game.

Now you can throw it in a long alongside docks, emerging weeds around Lily pads. The choices are endless and you can speed it up.

Now I get a you still use a small slender profile bait, but one that's maybe more of a flat face. That spits out more water and you want a little more, that puts out a little more action, a little more noise and don't make as long pauses in between.

So here he's like bloop, bloop, bloop and let it sit and then bloop, bloop and let it sit. Maybe pause 5 seconds, maybe a little bit longer and then bloop, bloop, bloop. You know, erratic.

You want to make it look like a bait fish that's struggling, that maybe was stunned by another bass and is struggling to stay alive. Something that looks injured. That's what triggers the strike.

And then of course when you get into the spawn, bringing one across. Bed works very well. Hold on tight.

Bringing it across fry garters after the spawn can be awesome. Sometimes you just right when the popper lands, you haven't even done anything, they'll bam, they'll smash it.

There's they get so aggressive and you just you can just sometimes bring it back so quick without any pauses. Just bloop bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop bloop bloop. And sometime during that retrieve wow, they'll crash it.

I mean it can be dynamite action for the first month or so. Maybe two months after the spawn. Can be really, really fun.

So it's a dynamite spring bait, bait even in the early spring, throughout the entire spring and into the summer.

So those are the top hard baits I would have on the deck ready to throw throughout the entire spring. Hope that helps. But more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.