Despite the often fast-paced mood, spring rewards those who know when to go slow.
February 18, 2025
By David A. Brown
Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases.
Talk about a dynamic season. Spring means spawning time for southern largemouth bass and when conditions ripen, big things can happen fast.
Keeping up with the pace often requires a peppy step — but not always.
As fish start to feel the increasing photoperiod and rising water temperatures, they depart their wintering spots and move toward prespawn staging areas outside the spawning flats. From that first approach to the actual bedding, anglers do well with a rapid-fire water-covering mix of lipless baits, bladed jigs, jerkbaits, and the like.
Advertisement
Chad Pipkens definitely believes in this game plan, but it took a painful accident to teach him the value of slowing down for spring bass.
“I broke my collar bone (in late February 2019) and I was supposed to not lift more than 5 pounds for six weeks and practice for the Bassmaster Elite tournament on Lake Hartwell started at four and a half weeks,” Pipkens said. “I only could fish a wacky worm and a Ned rig, so I was fishing slow and just trying to make the most of it and I ended up finishing ninth.
“Looking back, I would not have made the top 10 if I was healthy, because there were jerkbait fish and I probably would have done too much.”
Advertisement
Comparing his spring success to a fellow Elite renowned for his shallow-water stick-bait acumen, Pipkens said the limitations that collar bone injury placed on his normally fast-paced style taught him how the slow and methodical stuff also deserves springtime consideration.
“I couldn’t run around because it hurt to bounce, so I just John Cox-ed it and just (tossed) around a wacky worm and it was the right time of year for that,” Pipkens said. “I really learned to have patience because I wasn’t able to move around much.”
When Chad Pipkens had to fish a tournament while recovering from a collar bone fracture, his necessarily slow pace delivered a ninth-place finish. Cheer for the Swim Team That’s an interesting transition, because Cox has a few thoughts of his own to share. Along with his trusty stick worm (Berkley MaxScent The General ), Cox also integrates a swimbait into his slow spring searches.
“Especially when those fish are coming out of deep water and they’re getting up in that shallow water as they get ready to spawn, you really get some good feeding right before they move up there,” Cox said. “As they’re coming in, they’re eating everything that’s in their way, because they know that once the spawning process starts, they’re not going to be eating much.
“Those big females are looking for something that will give them a lot of energy before the spawn. They love swimbaits because they’re easy targets that look like something that’s going fill them up.”
As Cox notes, seasonal temperature changes not only affect the bass , but also their forage. Swimbaits, he said, play right into this reality.
“When they come up from that deeper cooler water, it kinda stuns them and I think that happens with the bait fish too,” Cox said. “So when that swimbait comes by a bass that has already acclimated to the warmer water, it looks like a baitfish that’s just kinda in a daze. I think that’s why a swimbait works really well.”
A wacky-rigged stick worm is one of the top baits for spring slowdowns. Vary the Looks One of the classic tactics for locating spring fish in weedy southern lakes is slow winding a soft plastic swimbait like a YUM Pulse , Gambler Big EZ , or Strike King Swim’N Caffeine Shad . Rigged weedless, these baits plow through scattered grass and tempt fish as they’re moving up, as well as the ones that have recently claimed a bedding area.
Cox adds a couple different looks to the spring lineup.
“I really like the Berkley CullShad ; that one’s just a straight, nice and easy reel, almost like slow rolling a spinnerbait right under the surface,” he said. “You can also put some nail weights in it to get it down a little bit deeper.
“The other one I like is the Berkley Nessie . It’s a soft glidebait, but I do a lot of just winding and it swims really well.”
From watching how fish react to his swimbait tactics, Cox has narrowed down some spring habitat consistencies.
“When you have cover, like a piece of wood that the bass is sitting on and sunning, it seems like the Cull Shad calls them up better,” he said. “When they’re in a position to ambush something, they smoke the Cull Shad.
“But when you get those fish roaming the banks and looking for bedding areas, that’s when the Nessie seems to work better. Another thing — the Nessie looks more like a blueback herring, so those bass that are used to eating herring are used to roaming more.”
The Berkley Nessie glidebait does a great job of tempting open-water roamers. The Closers Cox is quick to point out that, despite the swimbait’s big-bite potential, there will be times when those spring bass simply won’t commit. Post-frontal days are understandable, but even in stable weather conditions, you’ll find a few indecisive ones.
For such times, Cox knows well the tempting power of a wacky-rigged or weightless Texas-rigged stick worm. If those don’t work, he’ll send in a fluke-style bait or a jerkbait and work a tauntingly slow cadence.
“A lot of times, if they’re just following that thing, they’re more just defending an area,” Cox said. “They may not want to eat, but they’re trying to run off anything that gets near their spawning area.”
