How to catch those bedding bass

Bass guru shares tip on catching bass on the bed

This month, anglers will have no problem locating largemouth bass on lakes as long as they’ll look in shallow coves. It’s not uncommon to see areas that stretch for hundreds of yards just full of bass beds cleared out in weedy coves. It will look like craters on the surface of the moon.

You probably won’t see a bass at every crater, unless you get really lucky and time it just right, but you will see your share if you look carefully enough and are wearing good polarized shades. Catching them though, can be more challenging.

“You really just need to pester them into biting. Put enough lures in front of them for long enough, and they’ll bite just to get rid of it,” said LIVETARGET Lures representative Gary Abernethy of Asheville, who often spends a week on Santee during the spawn every spring.

Abernethy often tosses a soft plastic lure into a bed, then just shakes his rod tip to give the lure a little action. If the bass doesn’t pick it up, he doesn’t retrieve the lure. Instead, he sets his rod on the deck of his boat. With the first lure still sitting in the bass bed, he’ll cast another lure into the same bed. This might be a jig, a soft plastic creature bait, worm, or lizard.

He will give a little action to this lure now, and if the bass still doesn’t bite, he’ll set that rod down and toss a third lure into the bed.

“It really just takes a lot of persistence. That fish is territorial. It’’s going to stay tight to its bed, and if it gets too crowded, it’s going to eat – or at least pick up and move – whatever is crowding it. You have to always be prepared to set the hook, because it will happen quickly, then it’s back to a staring contest between the fish and lure,” he said.