The Rest of the Day After Shad Spawn Morning
After a great morning of catching a few or a bunch of aggressive bass during the shad spawn, the rest of the day can be quite an adjustment. Once the shad are gone off the bank, the bass are not in the same mood and are not there like they were during the shad spawn process. If you make some adjustments or know what to look for, you can continue to catch fish the rest of the day.
Pray for Some Weather
If you have heavy wind during the night, the shad spawn won’t be any good. If you have wind start once the sun gets up, I have seen this reactivate the bass to get more aggressive. This is wind deal is tricky because you need to know when the wind started. If you are out there, it is good and you will know. If you get out after the sun has gotten up and don’t know, it is real tricky. The wind can help a spinnerbait bite in stained to muddy water while a jerkbait can be hard to beat when the water is a little clearer.
Rain is the best. A light rain or heavy clouds won’t affect the shad spawn during the night and will extend the shad spawn bite for as much as 1 or 2 hours. This is money when it happens. Be careful if you get too much rain overnight, it will kill the shad spawn action. Even after the shad stop spawning, the bass will often stay shallow and be catchable if there is that rain and heavy clouds. This is ideal this time of year.
Beach Weather
Many times in the spring, you have a nice calm night with awesome shad spawn action in the morning only to have the sun come up and it turn to beach weather. The shad know it and leave the bank in a hurry. The bass follow and the bank action comes to a screeching halt. Under these sunny conditions, the bass either get on a bed or the closest heavy cover. I will immediately start looking for beds during this time in spawning protected pockets. In order to. Know what to throw there, check my best spawn baits video: https://youtu.be/D08lnGvkWTQ . If you don’t see any on beds, you want to look for the closest docks or grass mats. Drop shotting a Bomb Shot or Quiver 4.5 is great around docks during these conditions. Finesse is often better than power during this bass spawn/ post spawn time.
No Bank Cover Options
Many lakes don’t have much bank cover or anglers strike out there as soon as the sun comes up. The next 2 options for me are immediate. Topwater and big spoons in dock slips are the next options. This time of year, I love to throw a big spook style walking topwater in a shad pattern on Sunline 30-pound X-Plasma braid. The braid is key to long casts and great hook ups. A Whopper Plopper can be another great option. This bite can last all day. The big spoon deal is wild. A 6” spoon is sort of the standard size. Cashion Rods has the perfect big spoon rod option because it was designed by James Watson who put the “spoon jacking” on mainstream. Just pitch that big spoon into dock slips and let it fall. Rip it up and let it fall. This is a fun bite and you might not even think it will work until you catch one on it.
The shad spawn is possibly my favorite bite to get on all year. I love it. If you are not prepared to make some serious adjustments after it is over, you will go right into zero bite land for the rest of the day. Take these ideas and apply them to your after shad spawn bite trip and you can keep on catching bass.