In the Northeast, some of the toughest fishing is during post-spawn. The weather is finally nice, the lakes aren’t yet super-crowded with summer pleasure boaters, yet tournament weights are generally on the lower side – sometimes very low. Since the seasons are so compressed up north, you can wind up with virtually all the fish in the same phase on one lake. When they are all post-spawn, the bite can be tough. Recently, I won a tournament under those conditions using a pattern I feel will apply in other parts of the country.
We had a cold spring this year, so the fish spawned late. Lake Winnisquam in New Hampshire has a mix of both smallmouth and largemouth, and so the logical thought was to target the larger green fish. After a day of practice, this plan was out the window. I could catch largemouth, but they were all thin and spawned-out males. The larger females were nowhere to be found. There were still a few smallmouth bass on beds, but they were smaller as well.
Everywhere you looked, if you found hard-bottom shoals and gravel bars, you could see empty smallmouth beds. Somewhat by accident, while I was moving between spots, I caught a 3-lb smallmouth in about two feet of water. A few hours later, I caught another, also in about two feet of water. One is a fluke, two is interesting, but three could be a pattern. Read on….