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25.Apr.2011 by Jim Dillard
There are a couple of things going on in Southern rivers this time of year that can help you catch bass. For one thing, river bass tend to spawn later than lake bass because river water stays cooler longer, so you might find bedding fish as late as early May.
Where I’m from, which is Ouachita River country, bass spawn around cypress trees, stumps and logs out of the heaviest current. The water is likely to be so dingy that you don’t look for the actual beds; you look for the right cover and depth and then fish it as if you were looking at the bed. I fish a crankbait, ChatterBait or spinnerbait to cover a lot of water and a plastic lizard, Baby Brush Hog or a 3/8-ounce jig if I think I’m around bedding cover.
Another good river pattern involves focusing on the places where the river drains out of the swamps after spring flooding. This might be creeks, log pulls or just low places where the water is funneled back into the river as it falls. Bass use these travel routes to come out of the swamp, and a lot of times they’ll station themselves around low spots to catch minnows or other baitfish coming back out. If there’s good cover around the drains, it’s even better. A crankbait or a spinnerbait usually is all it takes to catch some of these bass waiting in ambush.
