Pond spawn stages help

[A fisher]

Can someone help me about the spawn? What are the stages and when do they happen? I live in SC wher it is normally pretty warm

[Dave Jakes]

In early spring, when the water temp is in the mid 50's, fish will start moving up.  However, they won't just go from deep water to beds in one day, they take their time.

In the winter, bass will hang out around deep structure.  As Spring approaches and they begin to think about spawning, they will start to relate to cover more so than structure.  (Structure is the underground geography, cover is brush piles, weeds, docks, ect.)

As they migrate from deep to shallow, they will travel along river channels, ledges, and bluffs, (structure) stopping to rest and feed along any cover they'll come across.  These various forms of cover at various depths are what I consider their stages.

For a real life example, last weekend I was catching fish off of brush piles in 25 feet of water.  This weekend I found them hanging out in stumps at 15 to 20 feet.  Within a couple more weeks, I'm guessing I'll be able to catch some males up shallow roaming around looking for bedding areas.

While that first wave of bass are moving up, there's a second wave behind them.  And a third wave behind the,, ect.  One of the reasons I love spring fishing is because there are so many different things you can do to catch them.  Around my area, once late March comes around there's fish guarding fry, fish on beds, big females nearby beds in deeper water, fish are still moving up and staging, they are just everywhere and it's wonderful.

Hopefully that clears some things up.

[papajoe222]

Dave just gave you an example of one of the benifits a big body of water offers.

As to when that first movement takes place, it differs from region to region and lake to lake. 

That movement is what's called pre-spawn. A rise in water temp. of four or five degrees can start some fish moving and the angle of the sun as the days get longer is also a contributing factor.

The two factors that you NEED to know are where the fish winter and where they spawn.  The movement up to the spawning area is a migration route. If you can determine that route, finding fish (and catching them) becomes easier.  BTW, that 'route' will be used by many of the fish during the post-spawn period and if that spawning flat doubles as a feeding flat during the summer, some fish will also use it to migrate to the shallows to feed on a daily basis.

The pre-spawn movement can take weeks on a lake that is slow to warm, or much less on smaller bodies of water like a pond. 

[Catt]

How big a pond y'all talking?