Fishing tips & tactics

How to catch Largemouth Bass

Micropterus salmoides

Largemouth Bass illustration from the Bump Board app

Bump Board's tactics library for Largemouth Bass — where to fish, what to tie on and how to fish it, season by season. In the app, these tips adapt live to the weather, the front and the light.

Largemouth Bass — Prespawn

Where to fish

  • Prespawn bass travel: from the ends of winter bluffs along migration routes — ditches, contours, tapering points, fallen trees — toward the spawning flats. They stage on isolated cover beside sheltered coves: stumps in murky lakes, and the boat docks near cove entrances.

What to tie on

  • Search with power first: a lipless crankbait combs the expanses, and in stained prespawn water a deep crawfish-pattern crankbait rooted along the bottom is the classic. For the staged fish, flip a ½-oz jig in a Texas craw colour to the outside corners of dock pilings.
  • Three jig colours cover 90% of everything for the jig school: black-and-blue, green pumpkin, Texas craw. Depth is the critical variable — get it right before you worry about anything else.

How to fish it

  • The general sequence: search fast to find them, then slow down on them. Watch how the fish are hooked — a bass hooked outside the mouth, or lost fish, is the signal to change colour, not location.

If it's still tough

  • Slow down on the staging cover itself — isolated stumps and dock corners beside the coves, pitched at precisely, more than once. Prespawn fish on a spot are worth repeated exact casts.

Largemouth Bass — Spawn

Where to fish

  • Spawning bass are on flat, protected water — 10 ft or less on natural lakes — on beds you can often see. The biggest bass spawn first. Worth knowing: one of the great power fishermen personally skips the beds and stays with prespawn fish, which are more aggressive and heavier.

What to tie on

  • For bedding fish, a jig worked so the skirt writhes while the head stays pinned in place — the movement is in the tip of the rod, not the retrieve. Soft plastics that stay in front of a guarding fish do the same job.

How to fish it

  • On a bed, patience and precision beat variety: put the bait in the bed and keep it there, shaking it in place. Off the beds, the prespawn pattern is still running a cast away in slightly deeper water.

If it's still tough

  • If bed fish won't commit, leave them and fish the staging cover — you'll catch more and bother the spawn less. Come back to the stubborn ones with the light change at the end of the day.

Largemouth Bass — Postspawn

Where to fish

  • Postspawn is a real tough time — the books say so plainly. The fish rest at vertical cover: dock pilings, submerged bushes, standing-tree trunks — and they suspend near the surface, sunning themselves, close to the bedding areas. The shady side of the rest stations — flooded bushes, stumps, laydowns, weed patches — fishes first.

What to tie on

  • Baits that stay in the strike zone instead of falling through it: walking topwaters, soft jerkbaits, stickworms, drop-shot rigs — presentations that hang high in the column where the resting fish are.

How to fish it

  • Fish high and slow around the vertical cover, shade side first. A postspawn bass near the surface will rise a few inches for a bait that hovers; it won't dive for one that sinks past.

If it's still tough

  • If the resting fish refuse everything, go back to prespawn water — the earliest spawners are already recovered and feeding there while the late spawners rest.

Largemouth Bass — Summer

Where to fish

  • On northern natural lakes, summer largemouth are a weedline story — the whole game. The outside edge of the weeds, down to 20 ft and more, with the inside corners, dips and deeper cuts in the line as the prime ambush points. Weeds' irregularities — holes, pockets, points in the grass — are where the fish are.

What to tie on

  • Pitch and punch: a 1-oz jig punched through the mats on braid, jigs and soft plastics along the outside edge. Crankbaits should run slightly deeper than the water you're fishing so they stay in contact and rip free through the weed tops.
  • Blades follow conditions: Colorado blades for vibration and thump in cold, stained water and low light; willow blades for flash in clear, warm, baitfish situations; a tandem for stained water in the in-between temperatures.

How to fish it

  • Flipping rules: most strikes come on the first fall, so the jig must fall vertically on slight slack — then shake it twice and feel. Heavy line is part of the technique: 25-lb fluorocarbon in cover, 60-lb braid in the extreme stuff.
  • For big bass specifically, the old masters' rule runs against the power game: big bass come on quiet, slow baits — worms, tubes, jigs, grubs — presented with more triggering quality than attraction: small, natural, with eyespots and a random bottom-contact action.

If it's still tough

  • When the weedline goes quiet at midday, the fish haven't left — they're in the thickest, shadiest part of it. Punch the mat itself, or wait for low light and fish the outside edge with topwater: dawn, dusk and overcast are topwater's hours.

Largemouth Bass — Early fall

Where to fish

  • Fall is the most baitfish-oriented season of the year, and our lakes have no shad — here, bass feed on bluegill and shiners, and both are grass-oriented. So fall largemouth are in the weedy areas with their food, not chasing open-water bait.

What to tie on

  • Shallow and medium crankbaits matched to the local baitfish's size, square-bills bounced tentatively through riprap and stumps, and always a noisy chugger tied on in fall — the books insist on the chugger. Match the forage's belly and back colours to your lake's bluegill and shiners.

How to fish it

  • Keep lures off the bottom — fall baitfish suspend, and so do the bass. Pay more attention to where the baitfish are than to the surface temperature; the bait map is the bass map now.
  • A white 3/4-oz jig with a chunk trailer, counted down to the baitfish's depth and swum with a slow, constant retrieve, is the jig school's fall play.

If it's still tough

  • Turnover — when the water's in the low 60s to upper 50s °F — is short and difficult fishing. It stabilizes in the low to mid 50s; if you're in the churn, fish the clearest, most stable water you can find and slow down.

Largemouth Bass — Fall

Where to fish

  • Cooling fall water keeps bass on the baitfish in the grass — weedy areas, weedline edges, and any shore the bait is using. It's still a baitfish season first and a temperature season second.

What to tie on

  • Medium crankbaits at baitfish depth, the counted-down white jig swum slowly, and the chugger whenever the light is low or the surface is broken.

How to fish it

  • Swim baits at the bait's level, not on the bottom. As the water drops through the 50s °F, slow the whole programme down a step at a time.

If it's still tough

  • Fronts in fall are not the enemy they are in spring — one veteran calls fall fronts a good thing for bass. If a front just passed, stay on the bait instead of retreating to deep water.

Largemouth Bass — Late fall

Where to fish

  • Late-fall bass slide toward winter: the deepest structure near the remaining green weeds, steep banks and the basins they'll winter in — 15–30 ft on natural lakes. Northern banks still warm fastest on sunny days.

What to tie on

  • The winter kit arriving early: suspending jerkbaits, heavy football jigs dragged slowly, and crankbaits only on the warmer afternoons.

How to fish it

  • Drag slowly, pause long, and fish the warmest part of the day. The year's metabolism is winding down — match it.

If it's still tough

  • Downsize the trailer and trim the skirt. Late-fall bass target smaller prey, and a smaller profile is often the whole fix.

Largemouth Bass — Earlyspring

Where to fish

  • The year's coldest bass live in the deepest water they'll use — on natural lakes, the deep flats and basins in about 15–30 ft. Structure is vertical and fast-sloping, close to a flat, and northern banks are warmest. Avoid water a cold north wind is hitting. This is the least active bass fishing of the year, and it's a patience game.

What to tie on

  • A suspending jerkbait is the favourite winter artificial of the power-fishing school — toward the upper end of the cold range, a crankbait joins it. With a jig: in clear lakes, a heavy 3/4- to 1-oz green pumpkin football jig; in murky water, a ½-oz black-and-blue flipping jig on steep channel banks.

How to fish it

  • Drag the football jig slowly on points, humps and rockpiles. Cold bass target small prey — if you're not getting bit, trim the jig's skirt and downsize the trailer before you change spots.

If it's still tough

  • Go smaller and slower still, and fish the warmest bank you can find. In near-freezing water a bass may inspect a bait for a long time — the pause is the presentation.

Largemouth Bass on the ice — Through the ice season

Where to fish

  • Through the ice, bass winter in the deepest water of their year — deep flats and basins, 15–30 ft on natural lakes, near the cover they'll use in spring. They're most active in the first weeks after freeze-up and again at late ice; the middle of winter is their quietest time.

What to tie on

  • The one book teaching there is: ice-bound bass can be tempted with a small jig or live bait. Small is the operative word — winter bass target small prey in everything the books describe.

How to fish it

  • Fish it small, slow and close to the bottom over the deep flats near spring structure — and give late ice a second look, when the season's second activity window opens.

If it's still tough

  • If mid-winter bass won't go, that's the season, not your technique — the books describe this as their least active time of year. Save the effort for early and late ice.

Manitoba Master Angler

A Largemouth Bass of 46 cm (18 in) or better qualifies for Manitoba's Master Angler Program.

Where Largemouth Bass live

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