Bass beds, no strikes. What’s the deal?

If your lake contains smallmouth bass, spawning season probably has started, or will soon. It has started on our lake (Birch, near Harshaw, Wisconsin). My brother and I noticed spawning beds while fishing earlier this week. We cast to several of them with severely limited results.

Now, it is said that catching smallmouths (or largemouths for that matter) from spawning beds is so easy as to be un-sporting. That is true, but only at the right time in the spawning cycle. On our lake, the water temperature has just edged into the lower 60s F, which is the trigger point for spawning.

When this happens, the males move into the shallows and use their tail fin to sweep away sand and expose gravel to create a circular spawning bed, slightly bowl-shaped and two to four feet in diameter. The males then wait for females to arrive.

At this stage, the male bass are not the least bit interested in food. They spend the time after ice-out (the period known as pre-spawn) feeding heavily, but when spawning time arrives, they basically quit eating. A friend, master wood carver and sometime sculptor of language, Tom Tittl of Manitowoc, explained this time of food abstinence as clearly as anyone could. Throwing bait in front of a spawning bass, he said, “is like someone offering you a hamburger while you’re in the throes of passion.”

Once the male finds a mate and the eggs are laid and fertilized, the male’s job is to guard the nest (and later the fry) for a couple of weeks. Here is where the fishing gets exciting. It’s not that the bass have started eating again. It’s that they aggressively attack and remove anything that encroaches on the nest where the eggs lie on the bottom incubating. That includes a lure dragged across the bed or a leech or nightcrawler dangled above it.

There are some who say anglers should leave spawning bass alone. Others say that if released unharmed, the bass return almost immediately to the nest and no harm is done. For my part, I like to work the beds a little, just for the thrill of catching (and releasing) a few of these incredibly powerful, acrobatic fish in the early season. Mostly I prefer to leave them alone and let the reproductive process play out.

Now as I ponder the spawning ritual, I can’t help asking: How many women wish their men would behave more like smallmouths – males who make the bed and take care of the kids?