All right, let's talk seasonal lure selection for the entire year. Yeah, you know, you're not going to use the exact same baits all year long. And even if you use a similar bait or the same bait throughout the year, you're going to fish it in different areas and you're going to fish it in different ways.
So let's cover that real quick, starting with winter, because winter you're going to have actually the least amount of choices when it comes to baits. It's actually the easiest time to fish in terms of bait selection because everything's slow, everything's moving really. This is when the water temps are below 50 to degrees. The bait fish and the forage that the bass are feeding upon are moving really slow, so that wipes out any of your fast moving baits. And bass aren't hitting top water in the winter time. So take your top waters off the table. Take your horizontal moving baits like spinner baits, crank baits, chatter baits, take all those, take them off the table.
What you're left with are things that you drag on the bottom. So primarily that means jigs like that's going to be your number one bait here in the winter time is a jig. And your fishing in deeper water. Deeper is relative to whatever lake you're in, but deeper typically means deeper than 15 foot deep. Depends on the lake you're at and the water conditions now, in my neck of the woods, I have a lot of clear water and I have a lot of deep lakes that go deeper than 100 feet. The bass like to hang out in that 45 to 55 foot range during the winter time. Your lakes might not get that deep or they may hang out in deeper water. But the key point here is just because a lake may go 100 foot deep doesn't mean they're going to be at the bottom at 100 foot. Bass typically don't like to get that deep, so don't. Go fishing that far.
You gotta find them. You gotta use your depth finders to find them. You know, fish main lake points, Creek channels, ledges, humps, ridges that are in that depth range typically. Again, a 15 to 30 foot deep is where I would go if I knew nothing about that lake and you're just dragging these jigs over that over that structure slowly dragging it, not hopping and skipping it or giving an extra action, slowly dragging it using 1/2 ounce jig. I'm using a trailer that has very. Little action to it, like a zoom chunk. Right. It just very little action, doesn't have a lot of movement on it. So it doesn't have like flanges. A lot of, you know, trailers you have these days have been edge or flange on the end of them, which makes them kick and move a lot of action. Don't use those in the winter time. You want a little bit of action.
So dragging that on the bottom using, you know, black and blue, black and chartreuse. Sometimes a brown jig works really well, but in those deeper depths the light penetration isn't as good and though the sun is lower in the horizon anyway so the colors get all muted. So don't get too crazy about what colors you want to use. I like to use the darker pigments because they contrast on the bottom of the leg they it'll show up better. Dark shadow will show up better on the bottom of a lighter color bottom of a lake than it would a lighter color. Football jig is our number one choice for doing this. Just slowly crawling it over the bottom. And that's all you need.
As for plastics, Texas rig plastics are going to be also something that was going to work really, really well. A worm or a creature bait works really, really well. I like to use tubes, you know, Texas rig tube, or I'll put a tube in the back of a split shot rig or even a Carolina rig and do the same thing with the jigs, just dragging it over those humps, those ridges right along those those breaks. You can find anything that's different on the bottom you got. Sloping straight bottom, it's typically not going to hold fish, but if you've got some scattered boulders in there, some stumps, something that's going to hold them in this deeper water, that is the type of thing you want to target. Steeper banks is also the key thing. Steeper rocky banks. Dock pilings are are bridge pilings. Those are the areas I'm going to target. So I may skip a long bank, for example, going to a bridge, if a bridge, by the way, if you got 2 points that come together. And go back out and then you got a bridge across here, you've got a little bit of a funnel point here too. So those bridge points, you know, bridge pilings and the points with the bridges are adhered to, those can be good areas. So just target the type of structure. During the winter time, your bait selection is going to be pretty minimal.
Now for the spring, it starts to open up. You remember in calendars, we've got calendar, right? Winter, spring, fall, you know, summer. It's not the same with bass behavior. You've got to break it up into mini seasons and spring is a prime example of that. Spring. Centers all around the spawn so really and that spawn happens right around that 60° low 60° watermark right and the water temperatures in those low 60° that's typically when the spawn happens in bulk. Now there's going to be some fish that spawn before that when some temps are in the mid to upper 50s and there's going to be some fish that spawn when the temps get you know 67-72° but the bulk of them will spawn in that low 60° range so that's your pivot point so in spring you've. At pre spawn you've got spawn and then you got postpawn, so you can break it into 3 mini seasons.
So in the pre spawn we're talking the water temps, right? When it breaches that 50° mark, right, it gets up in the upper forties, 50-51°. Now you're into pre spawn all the way up to about 60°. You start off slow, you're fishing the baits a little bit slower but shallower instead of getting that deeper water like I mentioned. Now moving up to that 10 to 15 foot range, 8 to even 8 foot, that's a 8 to 15 foot range. You're fishing at the beginning of that pre spawn period. Your dragging baits again. So your bait selection is the same as it was in the winter time, but I might throw in slow rolling a spinner bait or using a deep diving crank bait.
Again, moving it really slow, those rocky banks, those primary, you know, main lake points and the secondary points moving into the backs of flax. Those areas I would target as the water warms up. Then I'd go to the sloping gravel areas. Those areas have got some weeds in it, the docks that are in deeper water. Sunken brush piles in, you know, move it up to that 6 to 10 foot range, moving up even as shallower as you get closer to 60°. Now you're moving up less than 5 foot deep and your your arsenal changes.
Now you don't not so much top water except for frogs. Frogs can work and when the water temperature gets about 52-53° all the way up through this pond, but others. Other top water baits not so much, but now you can use spinner baits. Lipless crank baits work really well. On the pre spawn, make sure you're using those. I like to use the crawdad patterns because pretty much during the winter times the crawdads aren't very active. They don't come out and play a lot during the winter time. But now when it's warmed up, they get more active and they're a protein snake for snake protein snack for bass. So a lot of times they shift their diet from bait fish to crawdad. So a crawdad pattern of crankbait and jigs that are crawdad patterns work really well on the pre spawn.
Senko's come into play, you know, yummy Yum dingers. Weightless. Wacky rigged or rigged Texas rig worked really well in the pre spawn man, you can have yourself a heyday during that time.
So working those areas all the way up to the spawn when the spawn occurs is you know, you can see the bass on beds sometimes. Sometimes they're very, very well concealed. A couple of key things about it. Number one, just because they're on a bed doesn't mean they're an easy target. A lot of times they're very wary. They're not going to bite your baits. They're busy spawning, they're busy protecting beds. They're not thinking about eating things. So they they're not as easy to to hook. As you would think, and a lot of times they're hidden very well or they're up against areas where there's bushes or docks or the snaggy thing, so it's tough to get a lure in there without getting hung up.
That said, Texas rigged plastic baits reigned to me supreme. You know, a tube like a white tube. Or a Texas rigged lizard or a rage bug. You know, it's a bluegill kind of profile bluegill are nest Raiders. And it's a natural predator to the bass. So they tend to hit that more. Key thing when you're fishing betting bass is if you're targeting them, you know, catch them, photograph, weigh them and release them. Let them get right back to the spawning process immediately so they can continue that and make sure you've got plenty of babies and fish for years to come on your favorite lake. If you start catching them off beds, that just ends that process right there and you do that a lot over time and it can impact the fisheries. So don't keep the fish if you're fishing them off beds. That's just my little tip right there.
Postpawn, you've got a kind of a break it up a couple little seasons right there immediately have to postpone. You've got some fish that are in a funk. Primarily the the female fish, they just are, they're a little bit tired. They're worn out from from spawning. Some of the males are like that too. They're just not. Really in the mood to eat. They kind of want to get their energy reserves back up. That's a short, brief period, maybe a week or two right after the spawn. And then they start feeding up, regaining their their energy levels and sometimes they get very aggressive. At the same time, you've got some males that are Protecting fry.
And we call them fry guarders. Those are very aggressive bass as well. So top waters become really good baits to throw this time of year because the bass are super aggressive. So in addition to the frog that you've been throwing, now buzz baits, walking baits, pop-r. Those type of things become very popular and for good reason. It you can have yourself a blast for you know, two to three weeks after the spawn can be really fun for top water baits, crank baits can be really good.
And spinner baits. You know, fast moving baits, horizontal presentations. Can be excellent this time of year, right after the, you know, after that funk, that funky period, man. You know, to me, when the bass are in that funk and they're really not biting, that's the time when a soft plastic stick bait like a Yum Dinger or a Senko shines. Sometimes that's like the only thing they're going to bite during that period. But that is waning. It's short and then those aggressive top water bites come into play and it's a whole heck of a lot of fun.
So that's the spring. Moving into summertime now, you can open up your arsenal. There's a lot of baits, you can throw pretty much anything and you can catch fish on most any of that stuff. There's subtle differences, but the key thing is finding the bass. That's like the hardest thing to do in the in the summertime, the bulk of the bass population move back out a little bit deeper, not as deep as they were in the winter time, but somewhere in between that depth and where they were spawning. They'll find main Lake Point secondary. Points, deeper weed lines, humps, ridges, stumps, scattered boulders, even Creek channels. They'll set up on that and hang out during the winter time. The key thing is cover. So you're looking for all that stuff I just mentioned and weeds and also forage. If the forage is there and the cover is there, man, the bass aren't going anywhere and that means some of the bass stays shallow as well. They don't all abandoned the shallows. That's kind of a a myth and I'm trying to break that guys.
Sometimes even the heat of summer time, it's 100° out in the water, temps in the upper 80s. Those weeds put off our oxygen, they put off shade. There's a lot of cover in there. A lot of bait fish stay in there too. And that's all there. Then the bass are going to be there too. So working the tops of weeds with a frog, for example, can work really well or work, you know, a weightless Senko or a, you know, soft plastic stick bait or any kind of Texas rig plastic bait. Flipping and pitching and throwing it into those weeds and working them through those weeds. Swimming a lizard along docks. Skipping tubes under docks, skipping finesse jigs under docks. You know the thing you can skip under a dock and a nice hot summer day. If you got weeds all around the dock, even better because now you've got shade and comfort under the dock and you've got the weeds that harbor all the bait fish and the insects and stuff that the best feed on. They're just happy kittens underneath those docks. So if you can get a bait skipped underneath there, you can go from doctor dock to dock and catch a lot of fish despite it being shallow water and those deeper areas you get. Swede, so crankbaits work really well you can drag those jigs, but now instead of just dragging them really slow like we're in the winter time, you can work them with faster you can hop and pop and jig them along the bottom.
A lot of times you're looking for a reaction strike, so let it sit on the bottom and reel up to it and pop it off the bottom and let it flutter back down A lot of times those bass come up when you're doing that woo, what's that and they're looking looking and they might I don't know what it is then you bam, give it that quick yank and that quick movement they just. Fact. Something's getting away from them and they better take it or they'll lose it forever and that elicits a strike. So those quick kind of movements can get a lot of strikes. If you're fishing crankbaits, you want to make sure you're banging them off as something. If you're going through rocks or stumpy areas or areas that scattered boulders or RIP rap, every once in a while you want that lip to hit that rock and bounce it and deflect it and go off in a different direction. That quick change of direction often is what triggers a strike. So you know, in in the morning hours. Low light conditions are a cloudy day. Top waters, man fish top waters. It's so much fun. Buzz baits, walking baits, poppers. It can be dynamite this time of year, dynamite in the summertime, so don't forget to throw those.
Now as you move into the fall, things change rapidly. The forage moves shallow, the bass are going to all move up with them. So a lot of bass abandoned those deep water areas that are hanging in the summertime. They feed exclusively on shad or perch and bluegill and it's a feeding frenzy. However. It's not a guaranteed thing. It's not a sure thing because the bass are following bait fish. It's a kind of a here today, gone tomorrow. One day you can throw a safety pin out there and they will climb over each other to get at it and bite it. And the next day you can't buy a bite. So it's it's kind of weird fishing. It's it's, it's a bonanza or nothing feast or famine kind of deal. So you got to stay on top of the fish bait. Fish type of baits is what you want to use.
A crank bait reigns supreme during the summer, during the the fall periods. And same thing with any kind of plastic, soft plastic bait that resembles a bait fish like a rage, rage bug. Those type of things got a blue kill type of profile to them. Top water is excellent. Anything that looks like an injured minnow. So a popper or a prop bait, Zara Spook. Those work really well. You'll see bass schooling up on these. Bait fish, you often see them blowing up on bait fish right now. They'll school them into a big herd, and then they just start blowing up on them. And so throwing a top Otter into that frenzy, you often get bit. I find that that activity begins when you get the first fog or maybe even the first freeze overnight, freeze overnight, You know, real cold temperatures that like turns on in the baths are like, hey, winter's coming. I need to eat. And prepare for the winter so. Watch for that early fall. You get that transition period, the weeds start dying off and the bats start moving a little bit deeper. And then that freeze happens and suddenly they're all shallow again. And that activity happens, but it's, it's quick. It only work happens for a couple weeks and then those weeds are dying off and everything starts moving out deeper again.
If you're find brown weeds, don't fish them. They're consuming oxygen, not giving it out. And so there's not too many bait fish or bass in those areas. So move out till you find the green weeds and that's typically where you'll find the bass. So and then you get into the winter time again. We're back to doing that again. I forgot to mention jigging spoons. Work really well in the summertime and in the winter time, just jigging that up and down a lot. Works really well for suspended bass hanging out over humps and ridges in the summertime and in the in the winter time, same thing too.
So hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like that, visit bassresource.com.
