Hackney’s Prespawn Must-Haves

By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan

It’s a fickle time of year, but when Greg Hackney’s mapping out his plan to track down southern prespawn largemouth, he’s all about covering his bases. Not necessarily an intentional baseball parallel, but his process includes a quartet of baits that he’ll always have on his deck.

The starting lineup’s a good one, comprising reliable players with proven performance. However, before the game begins, Hackney wants to make sure the field is ready.

“The biggest key to having good prespawn movement is you have to have some winter,” Hackney said. “It seems like the fishing is better if we have some (significant winter conditions) before prespawn.”

Experience has shown Hackney that the colder the winter, the better the prespawn. The fish, he said, typically arrive bigger, healthier and much more predictable.

“When we don’t have that winter, the fish are scattered; you still have fish kinda doing everything,” Hackney said. “If you have that more traditional pattern where you have the cold water, they’ll start to relate to wintertime stuff and then make that move up to prespawn staging areas.

“If we don’t have cold weather, you can still catch them; you just don’t get them bunched up as good.”

Using his southern Louisiana region as an example, Hackney said late December 2023 brought a good push of blue across the weather map and that prompted a robust 2024 prespawn. This time around, 2024’s final quarter brought mostly mild conditions, but with the New Year delivering an early push of serious chill, Hackney’s looking for a solid 2025 prespawn.

“To me, this will make the fish easier to locate in groups,” he said. “It’s all about groups. Realistically, the fish you’re targeting in the prespawn are females.”

Prespawn Habitat Impacts

While grass and bass will always logically link, too much of a good thing can become a seasonal limitation. Hackney explains:
“The other thing the cold does is it resets the vegetation,” he said. “In the south and a lot of the United States, if you don’t have winter you still have lots of leftover vegetation from the previous summer.

“If you have (strong winter conditions), it causes the hydrilla, coontail and milfoil to lay down. It kills the hyacinth when you have a (cold) breeze. That isolates the vegetation and makes those fish easier to target. It doesn’t give them so much cover (in which) to scatter.”

Isolated cover/structure, whether it’s vegetation, stumps, logs or rocks, are your high-value targets once that prespawn march begins. Hackney’s fond of flat bays, flat creek banks, and flat pockets where those isolated targets hold drawing power for fish rising from adjacent depths.

What He Throws

Once he locates what he’s seeking, here’s how Hackney tempts the prespawners.

1. Lipless bait: Favoring a 1/2-ounce Strike King Red Eyed Shad Tungsten 2 Tap, Hackney typically starts with this one to cover massive amounts of water on those flats. Targeting isolated grass, pad stems, etc., he’s aware of the fish’s seasonal tendencies and trusts that bold, noisy bait to trigger bites.
“Those prespawn fish are in an aggressive mode, but I don’t know that they’re necessarily in a feeding mode,” Hackney said. “You don’t often find lots of bait around them, so it’s not so important to look for bait balls.

“Realistically, I think (a lipless bait) just triggers that fish to respond aggressively. I don’t think a fish moves out onto those flats to feed. I think they move out onto those flats to warm up and get comfortable, but they’ll take advantage of an easy meal.”

Comparing prespawn bass to deer in rut or ducks when they first arrive in Delta marshes, Hackney said these fish are vulnerable because they’re in the right state of mind. They may not be feeding-focused, per se, but anything buzzing past their face is likely to meet with violent response.

2. Bladed jig: After he’s given the lipless bait a good work out, Hackney shifts gears to a 1/2-ounce Strike King Thunder Cricket with either a Strike King Rage Swimmer (for working lower in the water column) or a Strike King Rage Craw (for higher retrieves).

“The Thunder Cricket shows them something different with all the vibration of a lipless bait, without the sound,” Hackney said. “It’s better in shallow vegetation and for making long casts over cover and working through it.”

Also, from Louisiana’s Toledo Bend to Florida’s St. Johns River, Hackney knows a bladed jig excels at targeting cypress trees. Fish tend to group by depth, so quickly probing with a tantalizing bait that’s fairly snag-resistant promotes time efficiency.

“You could have 1,000 trees in 4 feet of water, but the fish will be in a certain group of trees,” Hackney said. “When you find them, they’ll all be big ones. You can throw three to four times at the same tree and catch (multiple big fish).”

3. Swim jig: Performing the same water-covering search duties as the first two baits, the swim jig simply performs better in denser vegetation. Trusting the streamlined profile of his namesake Strike King Hack Attack Heavy Cover Swim Jig, Hackney follows the same trailer logic as with his bladed jig.
In addition to cover thickness, Hackney also factors in fish mood. Sometimes, the day’s complexion has them a little less spunky, or maybe he needs a more subtle bait to follow the brash presentations.

“That swim jig is good when you have clear conditions and clear water, or I’ve caught a lot of fish on the lipless bait and the Thunder Cricket,” Hackney said. “I can throw those two and then come back and show them something different with a swim jig.

“Also, I can fish this bait at different depths. There are times in the prespawn when fish rise high in the water column, so you can fish that swim jig over them.”

4. Texas rig: This one’s super simple, but amid the strategically mobile efforts, don’t overlook the value of hitting specific targets. For flipping/pitching visual cover, Hackney likes a Strike King Rodent with the lightest weight that allows him the accuracy he needs for the depth and wind conditions.

He’ll use mostly natural colors like green pumpkin and brown, but with his hard or soft baits, Hackney’s most fond of red for the prespawn. Notably, he’s not big on orange, unless he’s fishing dirty water.

In any case, that Texas rig serves as his clean-up bait.

“If I have gone though with moving baits, then I’ll go back through and pitch to specific targets,” he said. “This is better when fish are relating to forage like crawfish. Those crawfish spend the winter underground and when the water gets into the low 50s, that’s also when the crawfish start emerging.

“It’s an easy forage that the fish don’t have to work too hard to catch.”

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