Pre-spawn Fishing Tips for Lake Guntersville
Author: Captain Mike | Filed under: Fishing Articles, Fishing Tackle, Fishing Weather, Tips and Tactics
There is no better time on Lake Guntersville than the pre-spawn time of year. With the water warming, bass are on the move to feed. The warm sun feels great on your shoulders after the chill of winter. Hunting season is over and it’s time to go to the lake.
Well the first thing I suggest you do is to make sure your rods and reels are tuned, strung with new line, and ready to go. Oil your reels, sharpen your hooks, check the battery on your boat and get ready for a time of your life on Lake Guntersville. Oh, and by the way, check the grease fittings on your trailer wheel bearings. I learned this the hard way.
There are several ways to catch fish this time of year, so don’t worry…. If you get on the water the bites will be there.
My very first tip (and my favorite pattern) is to fish a Rat-L-Trap® over the top of the humps. With the bass moving back and forth from the shallows to feed, pulling a trap is a great way to find fish and catch some trophy size bass.
A few keys to catching bass on a trap is to make long casts, use a heavy enough trap to tick the top of the grass and try several different retrieves until you find one they hit. You can stop and drop it, yo-yo the trap, or just burn it over the top of the humps. Remember the trap is a reaction bait so the different retrieves along with the deflection off the grass will cause the bite to occur.
My next favorite is slow-rolling a big 3/4- to 1-ounce Punisher Lures “Flame Spinner Bait.” This lure with its big blades is the best of the best. I put these in the hands of every client that fishes with me. This is another reaction bait, so pulling it slowly over the grass and just ticking the top is a great way to find a big fish during the pre-spawn.
Remember, you fish a spinner bait with your wrist; it’s that wrist action that keeps the bait in contact with the bottom while you are slow-rolling it. A spinner bait this time of year may very well be the best big fish finding lure on the market. Being an accomplished fisherman with a spinner bait may be the difference in winning a tournament or not.
This time of year we often see drastic weather changes from day to day. Because of that my next tip deals more with a cold high-pressure days during the pre-spawn. When this occurs you will find that the fish don’t move to the tops of these humps and feed; instead, they position themselves in about 8 feet of water on the edges of the humps. When this occurs I generally turn to my Carolina rig fishing with a six-inch lizard or a big floating worm. This allows you to slow down and back off the humps further and work that Carolina Rig down the edge of the hump into the 8 feet of water slowly yet effectively.
A big, floating worm rises slowly as you are working it, and is very effective way to create a strike when the fish are suspending over the edge looking for an easy meal. You see a floating worm works in reverse of a “dinger;” it floats upward in that darting movement that makes the “dinger” so effective, pulling it slowing and keeping contact with the bottom is the key.
As the pre-spawn moves on, the buck bass start moving to the shallows. Concentrating on wood is an ideal way to catch several bass a day on Lake Guntersville. I always find the stumps this time of year and fish a Texas-rigged lizard. Lightly weighted and moved precisely through the stumps, this is a great way to catch fish. Your casting skills will be put to the test, because a precise throw to a stump can produce a bite while an erratic throw 6 feet away may not. Use a good pair of polarized sunglasses will help you make precise casts and will make the difference in catching fish or not.
A few years ago we had a heavy late-winter rain that wiped out the grass in the stump fields. Afterwards a friend and I headed to a stump field in his jet-powered boat, and for more than a week we caught a bass every time we were precise enough to hit the stump with our cast. So believe me when I tell you that hitting that stump is very important while fishing this pattern.
Another productive bait over the past several years has been a Senko, Dinger or Magic stick. There are all pretty much the same — a 5- to 7-inch worm weighted with enough salt to sink in a darting motion when fished without a weight. It’s been extremely productive on Guntersville for the last few years, catching big fish as well as little ones.
The problem with this bait is the pure fact that the lighter the weight on a Texas rigged worm, the harder it is to feel a bite, and the heavier the weight the easier it is to feel the bite. I find that fishing this bait with my clients tends to produce many misses and many deeply-hooked fish. So deep sometimes that I worry when fishing this bait about killing the bass, and that is something I never want to do. I want to put back every fish in as good a state of health as possible. With inexperienced fisherman or when a guide client is having a hard time detecting a bite I sometimes rig this bait with a hook that has no barbs to protect the fish.
Some days this time of year, wind on the lake is nonexistent, it’s relatively warm and sunny, and you can’t get a bite. When this occurs, one of my favorite patterns is to get out my top water baits. I especially like fishing a Zara Spook Jr. when it’s calm like this.
For shallow calm water over stumps or grass that is just starting to grow, there is no better Pre-spawn bait than a Spook. The action on calm water is just perfect; the bass cannot control themselves. You will get many hits and have a great time with this bait. I have caught fish on pre-spawn days like this in 3 to 4 feet depths when the water temperature is in the mid 50’s. Sometimes the shallower you go, the more fish you catch. The ideal way to work this bait is to twitch it so it moves back and forth through the water, the old “walk-the-dog” technique.
Over the years I have learned to not put away my jerkbaits that I use during winter. They can be very productive during pre-spawn for anglers who have patience. Several years ago when the B.A.S.S. was coming to Guntersville in late February the winner of that event won the tournament on a jerk-bait. The key was the fact that he was extremely patient, waiting sometimes 6 to 8 seconds between movements. The water was still cold, the weather was a typical high pressure February day, and the jerkbait produced the winning bag in less than 6 feet of water. This was one of those pre-spawn times when the fish needed real slow-moving baits and the patience of a crane to catch fish. My point here is be aware of the weather conditions and use your fishing knowledge to lead you to a bait that will overcome the obstacles that weather sometimes throws at you.
There are times on the water when you have tried every pattern you can think of and it’s hard to produce a bite. When this occurs I suggest you examine boat position. I have found over the time that there are many times in the pre-spawn period that the angles you fish a hump or ledge have more to do with the bite than the lures you’re fishing. It’s sometimes as simple as positioning yourself over the deeper edge and casting to the top so that you work from the top of the ledge or hump to the outer edge rather than pulling your baits from the deep to the shallow. I have found many times that working the bait from the deeper edge to the top is the only change that you need to make to get a bite. So think out there on the water and use as many boat positions as you can imagine. Utilize your boat as a tool to aid in catching fish.
Another bait I have utilized over the years during the pre-spawn is Mann’s Baby 1-Minus®. The wobble of a 1-Minus is extremely tough for a bass to ignore. It’s one of those baits that you may have in your tackle box and hardly ever use. Well, I can tell you that a 1-Minus has been an extremely productive bait for me in 50 degree water in very shallow water, around stumps and low-lying weed lines. I found that you must fish this bait in a stop-and-go method, and the bass will hit it when you do. It’s a very quick stop-and-go; just enough to give the bait some hesitation during the retrieve. The other thing I like about this bait is that it comes in some really bright colors. This time of year because of wind and spring rains you could be fishing in some very muddy water. Bright colors on big-wobble shallow-running crankbaits in muddy waters present an opportunity to catch some great Guntersville bass.
My last tip is to draw your attention to your 3- to 5-feet deep running crank baits. I especially like these around stump fields in 4 to 6 feet of water. A crankbait deflecting off a stump is very tantalizing to a bass. That erratic move when it hits wood and deflects to one side or the other produces many strikes from good fish. I realize you’re spending some time hanging up and getting those treble hooks out of those stumps, but it is worth the trouble. With a little practice a crankbait can be worked around stumps very effectively by just working it slowly and precisely so you’re not pulling the treble hooks into the wood. Work the bait slowly to make it bounce off the wood and wait for the fish to tell you when you have a bite. This tip is worth some examination even if you normally don’t fish with a crankbait much. When I hand this bait to guide clients and they tell me that they don’t like using one very much, I urge them to just give it a chance… work it slowly and see how great a pre-spawn bait this can be.
Well I believe that these tips will make you a more successful pre-spawn fisherman no matter where you re. The Pre-spawn time is a great time to be on Lake Guntersville. Come fish with me and let me show these ideas one on one. I promise you will be pleased and learn a lot about our beautiful Lake Guntersville, Alabama.
Captain Mike Gerry
Fish Lake Guntersville Guide Service
Web: www.fishlakeguntersvilleguideservice.com
Email: bassguide@comcast.net
(256) 759-2270
Tags: guntersville, March fishing, Mike Gerry, pre-spawn, spring fishing
