B.A.S.S. 1st Posted in 2008: Bright green lily pads with stark white flowers make for memorable backgrounds in artists’ renderings of leaping largemouth. But consistently catching oversized bass from pads isn’t easy, nor is it particularly common. In truth, sprawling lily pad fields can be some of the most difficult and frustrating areas bassers can work. Fish can be widely scattered and difficult to locate in pads. And hauling a big bass out of the tough pad stems is a major challenge.
“I don’t get excited about every lily pad bed I see, especially on sprawling lakes with hundreds of acres of pads like Santee Cooper,” says Elite angler Ish Monroe of California. “But lily pads can be loaded with bass in certain areas, and at the right times of the year.
“In lakes where there is a wide variety of vegetation, such as hydrilla, milfoil or peppergrass, bass usually prefer those weeds to lily pads. But in lakes where lily pads are the dominant cover, they’re very important, and are great places to catch plenty of fish. Florida’s Lake Tohopekaliga and the Harris Chain of Lakes are prime examples.”
Veteran tourney angler and television fishing show host Joe Thomas notes that some waters offer better pad fishing than others. The Ohio angler has many favorite pad lakes in the North, such as the St. Lawrence River, where back bays full of lily pads can be superb for largemouth (although they rarely hold smallmouth).
“To find the best pads you have to be aware of little things that attract bass to specific spots,” explains Thomas. “And when you find those spots with bass, they can hold fish year after year.”
One key to locating bass in lily fields is to pinpoint things that are different, like small areas intermixed with brush, logs, stumps or other types of vegetation. A submerged ditch might be too deep for lilies to grow, resulting in a cut or channel through pads that bass hold tight to. Windward pad points or gaps where wind and current cause bass forage to collect also can be choice spots, he says.
Pad fields early in the year can be prime spawning spots for largemouth, and both Monroe and Thomas have made big catches from such places. Timing is important to locating spawning fish in pad fields. In the North, this occurs when only pad stems are visible, long before oversized pads open up.
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