Good Tactics for Bad Spotted Bass
Taking Deep Spotted Bass
Editor’s
Note: The spot likes clear water and deep, rocky structure
and loves to fight. He is delicious to eat but tough
to catch because he is the baddest bass in the bassing
business. A method that produces many spotted bass during
the spring and summer months is night spinner bait angling.
Ricky
Green of Arkansas is one of the nation’s leading
spinner bait anglers. “The trick to catching spots
with a spinner bait at night is to let the lure free-fall
right down a rocky ledge. As the lure falls, you must
be able to feel the blades turning without pulling the
spinner bait back toward the boat. Most of the time
the spot will attack when the lure is falling rather
than when you’re retrieving.” When the weather
is so hot anglers want to give up fishing, spinner baiting
for spots at night can be exciting and productive. Sometimes
when the sun goes down, the good-sized spots come out.
At some of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) lakes
in Tennessee, spotted bass have been taken as deep as
100 feet.
Dr.
John Ramsay, now retired from the Alabama Cooperative
Fish and Wildlife Unit at Auburn University, suggests
that, “You tend to catch bigger spotted bass on
deeper structure than you do on more-shallow structure.
If the fish have a choice in water depth with equally
good structure available, the larger spots tend to choose
the deeper structure while the smaller spots may utilize
the less deep structure.” Dr. Ramsay mentions
one
more characteristic of the spot that he prefers to the
largemouth. “The spot is a better-eating fish
than the largemouth bass and doesn’t taste near
as fishy as the largemouth. Perhaps because the spotted
bass eats more crustaceans than the largemouth do is
why the flavor of the meat is somewhat different.”
Dr. Ramsay also confesses that when he is fishing he
prefers catching a spotted bass rather than a largemouth,
although the maximum size of spots is usually 4 to 5
pounds. “Spots are more challenging to try and
catch. They put up more of a fight, and they are better
to eat. I like fishing for spotted bass more than for
largemouth.”
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