Boom! Spring! Or Is It??

[Paul Roberts]

I cannot write a short trip report. There’s just too much going on to keep track of. Hope you’ll find this interesting and relevant to some of your early season fishing.

 

March 14, 2013

1pm – 6pm

Mostly sunny following a cold front with snow. High 70F!

 

Reporting on the weather on the day of fishing alone can be misleading. Tracking the fish means following trends. This day was a good example of that, a beautiful partly sunny spring day with a high of 70F. Great heating day! Yesterday was in the mid 60s too. Surface temp's ran 57F to 64F in the shallow ponds I perused today. It's "spring! Yes?? Well...not quite...

 

These brilliant blue "spring" days were the first really warm spring-like days of the year, and followed back to back cold fronts that had dumped several inches of snow on my ponds over the past week and a half. From my home high above the plains where the ponds sit I could see that the snow had finally melted off completely just yesterday, my fishing day today being 2 days out from snow melt. Where would the fish be in their year?

 

March is the month of awakening here. While warm spells in late January and February can start some birds singing prematurely as this behavior is under photoperiodic control, it is strongly influenced by immediate weather. Cold snaps put a cork in those premature singers. Seasonal fish behavior is similarly under endogenous (internal) control and exogenous (external) influence.

 

These plains ponds may experience ice-out as early as January or February some years, but the fish remain in winter mode, the shallows being devoid of mature bass and bluegills until sometime in March when photoperiod and sun angle has increased, promising warming trends that draw fish toward heated shallows. It’s the bluegills, carp, and small bass that arrive first and they appear to be heat seeking. However, interestingly, (as you may have read about elsewhere) the NW corners do indeed draw the most fish –probably bc the slight difference in heat and sun accumulation compared to the rest of the N shorelines stimulates the lower end of the food chain in the NW quicker. However to make a NW corner, or any shoreline, a really good fishing spot good habitat (depth and cover mostly) has to be present too. Good habitat attracts larger ‘gills and the bass that follow them. A horde of 2” sunfish, happy with similarly miniaturized habitat, just doesn’t draw mature bass like a horde of 4 to 6”ers does.

 

As I hiked in I checked out the ponds I passed for clues of just where in the season this day sat. Some years the bass make their appearance by mid March. Today my ponds looked like they were still at ice-out stage, the water a slightly turbid soup of dead algae and flotsam floating about. But ice had left early this year, being a warm droughtish winter. The ponds today were experiencing rapid warming following the back to back snowfalls of last week, again, the snow finally melting off completely just yesterday. Birds were singing and the herons in the rookery making a racket. Some bluegills and carp were collected on the N and esp NW shores but not that many, and the gills were all the small ones. I saw no mature bass or bluegills. "It’s still early", I mumbled to myself, "The bass are most likely still in winter quarters."

 

On top of the current weather trend, our droughted winter has brought low water levels to the ponds, some down as much as 3 feet (over the course of the winter) leaving some habitat areas high and dry or too shallow to draw mature bass. Such shrinkage of habitat in general tends to cause bass to fall back from the shallows, often relating to steeper contours -just like many wintering locations. Today, in some places the only comfortable depths for mature bass are the deeper steeper winter quarters, which is where I found them today. But water level doesn’t explain the bass’ current location entirely as some ponds that experienced only a foot of water loss did not have bass cruising the shallow coves either. In fact, I did not see a mature bass, or a mature 'gill, in the shallows in the 6 ponds I perused today. That says a lot. After a short peek into the first three I came to, I headed straight for known bass’ winter quarters, focusing on two ponds.

 

The first pond had had a strong year class of bass from 2007. Last I fished them in 2011 there were good numbers of ~13”ers there. Mature bass here gain about 1-1/2” per year so I expected those fish to be in the 15-16” bracket now. In the years I’ve fished this pond the bass tend to top out at somewhere around the 18inch mark.

 

I measured 64F ST along the N bank! That is enough to make one think SPAWN! But, the bass are far from ready for that, the average spawn initiation date here still more than a month away. As mentioned at the beginning, there’s more to that story than a fixed temperature.

 

The NW corner that attracts a lot of fish in this pond was too de-watered from the drought to hold fish. I went through the motions anyway, but failed to turn or see a bass. So I moved back down along the N shoreline to the wintering hold, a channel cut when this pond was a working gravel quarry. At its present level this channel would be no more than 5 feet deep, but it’s what there is in this shallow pond, so the bass use it. The key area, the deepest part, cannot be reached from shore and I discovered it several years ago during a worse drought than this one, when I was able to wade out to alongside it and found bass stacked in there like cordwood. Today, on a long cast I could just hit the very edge of the key area of the channel.

 

With warm water and winter mode fish ... What do you throw? I felt a good safe place to start was something with good attraction but not too much forward speed. With such warm temps esp, trying some speed isn't a bad idea, but with the bright skies, calm surface and shallow water, I didn't want to spook the fish off the bat. As it was, casts did push wakes of nearby fish away from splashdown, indicating that they were spooky, despite the relatively low sun angle. The shallow depth and dead vegetation between me and the channel precluded the use of a jerkbait or lipless and the water was a bit turbid for a topwater #11 floating Rapala -an early season killer. I’d have chosen a small grub jig that had good strike inducing action (like a paddletail) had I not forgotten the box! I could picture it back at home sitting on the shelf where I’d left it. I debated over a soft jerk and a tube and went with a 3-1/2” bluegill hued tube on a 1/16oz weedless internal jighead rigged to scoot and corkscrew on the fall.

 

I tossed around the immediate shallows, finding no one. "Well, they aren't on fire", I thought. Then, on a long cast to the very edge of the channel I found, by brail, a large dead milfoil clump. Bumping it, tugging the tube through, then letting it fall resulted in “Whump!”, the first bass takes of the season. I took three off that clump, a 14, 15 and 16”er before things quieted.

 

I inspected the bass for clues on seasonality. They were a deep color, and yellowish, both indicators of winter bottom oriented pre-prespawn largemouths here and, more telling, they also had red teeth, now beginning to fade from the brilliant scarlet of real cold water winter bass. So it appeared I was indeed fishing to wintering bass, despite the 64F water so close by. I’d forgotten to bring my temperature-at-depth thermometer (always forget stuff on my first trips) but I doubt the depths of that wintering channel were much less than 54F.

 

On the way to my next target pond, I stopped to fish another one and drew a blank there. This one had a ST of 57F. The shallow coves had attracted hordes of little yearling bluegills but no larger ones. I fished the tube, a swim jig, and a #11 Rapala as both a twitched topwater and shallow jerk at various speeds, turning no fish. The higher water clarity, the lack of tall weed clumps for "ambush points", the fact that the breeze had died, and the fact that I simply do not know the wintering quarters of the mature bass in this dishpan shaped pond had me deciding to find an easier bear to tackle. I felt challenged, knowing there are a lot of nice fish in this pond, but being my first trip of the year I wanted to be catching more than exploring.

 

So I moved on to my next target pond, one in which I have a good bead on a good wintering spot, a steep sided bank that drops quickly into the pond basin, all of about 8 feet deep at present level. I'm guessing the depths were around 50F. This drop was rimmed with tall but dead milfoil clumps (all the better; you never really know just how weed bed structure will come through the winter) and good numbers of small bluegills held in the tops. I tried a hard jerk first but felt it wasn’t getting down with the angle I was able to fish it, being shorebound. So I switched to a small 1/4oz lipless and was in business taking three 14 -15”ers, these too yellowish in coloration and with red teeth.

 

Walking out I looked again for shallow visible mature bass, seeing none, the shallows devoid of them, or the larger bluegills. But it’s not far away. Next week perhaps. We’re rolling into spring now and winter’s seeing its last. Even the late snowfalls won’t have the impact they could earlier. The sun is just too high now.

 

The remaining ice on the S shores revealed just how close behind us winter really was today, despite the spring-like date and temperatures.

 

This channel is the winter quarters of the bass in one shallow sprawling pond.

 

Whump! First bass of the year. Ah, it feels good.

Internal rigged weedless tube jig that produces a nice triggering fall.

 

Tube bass. Note yellowish hue.

 

Red teeth, just beginning to fade, indicating proximity to winter.

 

‘Nother tube bass. Notice red at base of anal fin, related to the red teeth phenomenon.

 

Lipless crank bass. Just behind is the steep winter bank on this pond.

 

The crank was a 1/4oz Sebile FlattShad. They're pricey, but they have a tight wiggle and stable horizontal fall that bass like in cold water.

 

Another. Pretty things they are.

[Hooked_On_Bass]

Excellent post, Paul. Glad it worked out for ya and you were able to hook up with some.

Thanks for sharing!

[paul.]

this is seriously one of the coolest posts i have seen on here.  magazine quality stuff right there.  thanks Paul.  great catches too.

[Siebert Outdoors]

Very nice Paul.  Congrats.

[senile1]

Very interesting post, Paul.  I think the biological changes in bass that you discuss in your posts are very helpful to those who fish and aren't familiar with them.  Great information!

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks for reading, and the kind words.

[PABASS]

Awesome read Paul, very similar to my experience here in the EAST coast two weeks ago as well.  So the yellow is due to the Bass being on the bottom and or the cold that's causes changes in the blood?

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks, PABASS.

 

You know, I have no idea why very early season (winter) bass tend to be yellowish. I associate the color with mud on the belly (although many don't have mud) apparently from resting on the bottom for some time.They seem to lose it quickly though, lightening up to white bellies and greener sides.

 

And I don't know why in cold water they get brilliant red (blood engorged) tooth pads, fin bases, and sometimes engorged capillaries under the skin along the throat and belly. This is very common -all bass seem to have it here very early. A common explanation for the red teeth is that they are crunching crayfish -apparently appearing to anglers as worn and bloody. But this isn' t the case here. My best guess is it is hormonal. I have wondered if it had anything to do with the stress of fighting when in very cold water, but I'm not so sure of that, just a passing thought since all the bass I handle that early are caught by hook and line.

[bassfisherjk]

Good Post Paul,I love the detail.WTG!

[PABASS]

Thanks, PABASS.

 

You know, I have no idea why very early season (winter) bass tend to be yellowish. I associate the color with mud on the belly (although many don't have mud) apparently from resting on the bottom for some time.They seem to lose it quickly though, lightening up to white bellies and greener sides.

 

And I don't know why in cold water they get brilliant red (blood engorged) tooth pads, fin bases, and sometimes engorged capillaries under the skin along the throat and belly. This is very common -all bass seem to have it here very early. A common explanation for the red teeth is that they are crunching crayfish -apparently appearing to anglers as worn and bloody. But this isn' t the case here. My best guess is it is hormonal. I have wondered if it had anything to do with the stress of fighting when in very cold water, but I'm not so sure of that, just a passing thought since all the bass I handle that early are caught by hook and line.

It seems colder water in general does it to Bass, another pond I fished late November had some yellow hues, nothing like the one I caught two weeks ago however.

 

 

First Bass of the season, looks like it had a running with a larger predator.  Notice how yellow he is, caught him in the deepest N/W part of this ultra clear pond.

[Paul Roberts]

Yes, that shows the yellow color well. Again, not sure what it's about.

 

Looks like a scar from a heron.

[PABASS]

Yes it could be we have Blue Heron's around, never seen one at this location but there is a ton of water/food to support them.  Although I cant recall if the scar was on the opposite side as well..

 

I have never seen a LMB that yellow, all his fins are yellow.  Sadly I think this pond will have a large die off as they introduced grass carp and the water is ultra clear with little to no cover and now no vegetation.

[Big-O]

GREAT READ Paul and it appears that your fish are talking in the SPRING language to you        

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks, Big-O. Yup, spring is jjjjjuuust around the corner. The battle of the titans is still being waged though. Winter just got a big punch in yesterday with over a foot of snow dumped on us. But the sun is out today and it'll melt off quick. There's one thing I can predict with assurance -summer will win. The rest is a mix of fun and frustration, looking at the forecasts and planning my fishing days. "Spring" here in the north can be intense.