Merwin: Cold Water Spring Bass Lures

After posting the other day about fishing and not catching, I thought I should redeem myself with a little fish porn. Here’s a nice largemouth--I guess around 6 or 7 pounds--that I took with a deeply fished soft-plastic swimbait on a very cold day. Our northern bass are still pre-spawn right now, and there are still frost warnings in the evening weather forecasts.

Bass jigs with soft-plastic trailers, plastic worms, and soft tubes are all taking bass this week, but low and slow is the key in still-cold April water. Green pumpkin is inevitably my favorite color choice for all the foregoing, but when it comes to bass jigs I also like a 
black-and-blue mixed color combination.

In a couple of weeks when the water warms up and the fish become a little more aggressive, I’ll be throwing jerkbaits along the channel edges. Twitching a floating Rapala just below the surface is a little more fun because I can see the fish taking the lure or even just swirling at it.

Those aren’t the only early season lure choices, of course. Any other ideas for waking up bass that are still lethargic in the cool waters of spring?