Spring is the absolute best time of year to catch bass near the bank. Smallmouths, largemouths, and spotted bass all flood the shallows each spring to spawn. As part of their annual ritual, the bass pair up, sweep beds clean with their tails, and then deposit and fertilize their eggs. And it all makes for some really exciting fishing.
When bass are spawning, or bedding, you can fish for them one of two ways. If the bass are bedding in clear water, you can sight fish for them—that is, try to catch them while you're actually looking at them. When the water is muddy, you won’t be able to see the fish bedding but you can still target isolated cover—like boulders, stumps, weed clumps, and dock posts–where you believe fish are likely spawning. This is known as blind bed fishing.
What baits you choose to target bedding bass usually depend on whether or not you can see the fish, how deep the water is, and what species of the bass you're after. So, with all of those variables in mind, here are my picks for the 10 best baits for bed fishing. Keep in mind, that when I say "baits" here, I mean general types of baits (swimbaits, glide baits, etc.) or general rigs (Texas rig, Ned rig, etc), but each entry below includes recommendations for specific lures and terminal tackle.
Related: Spawn Reporters: Expert Advice for Catching Spring Bass
1. Texas Rig
Of all the ways to catch a bass off bed, a Texas rig is undoubtedly the best. Part of the reason is the versatility of this rig. You can use a Texas rig to catch any species of black bass off a bed; it works whether you’re sight fishing or blind fishing for bedders; you can pair it with a wide assortment of soft-plastic lures; it has a great hookup ratio; and, most importantly, the bullet weight at the nose of the bait keeps it on the bottom.
You’ll notice a trend among half of the baits on this list—they are bottom dwells. When bass lay their eggs on the bed, they become very protective of that area. When they see a lure bouncing through the bed, they perceive it as a threat to their eggs. Then, whether they are hungry or not, they’ll usually eat the bait or at minimum pick it up and carry it out of the bed. This desire to protect the bed makes Texas-rigged tubes, lizards, worms, craws and creature baits extremely effective—with the lizard being the best of all.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Texas-Rig Baits
Related: Texas Rig Fishing for Bass—A Complete Guide
2. Jig
Sticking to the bottom-bait theme, a jig is another great lure to have on deck when bass are bedding. Typically, a jig is better for blind fishing for bedders around shallow cover and deeper beds. Flipping a 3/4-ounce jig in Florida around isolated clumps of reeds is a great way to catch bass that are spawning that you cannot see. Likewise, dragging a finesse jig in 3 to 6 feet of water can be a great way to bed fish for spotted bass along rock walls, sandy points, and sea walls.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Jigs
3. Ned Rig
A Ned rig is another great bait for targeting spotted bass, largemouths, and especially spawning smallmouths. These simple little rigs mimic crawfish and other small predators as they are drug through beds, and they’re too easy to slurp up for the bass to let them pass by. When bass are bedding, you typically want to shy away from craws with big flapping appendages, as bass will often pick these baits up by the claws and tote them out of the bed without ever getting the hook. A Ned rig, on the other hand, is nearly all hook, so there’s very little bait that the bass could pick up by without it getting the hook. For spotted bass and smallmouths, which have smaller mouths than a largemouth, a Ned rig is one that just makes sense.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Ned Rig Baits
Related: Ned Rig Fishing for Bass—A Complete Guide
4. Shaky Head
A shaky head is the perfect middle ground between a Ned rig and a Texas rig. And, while you can certainly catch all three aforementioned species of black bass on a shaky head, this bait is especially effective at catching spawning spotted bass. Spotted bass like to spawn on rocky bottom, but a Texas rig has a tendency to hang up in this type of terrain. There’s also some wood mixed in from time to time, and that can be a little treacherous for a Ned rig to navigate. A weedless rigged shaky head, however, can sneak through both and still present a subtle bottom bait that’s a threat to the eggs but not intimidating at all to the bass—a perfect combination for both sight fishing and blind bed fishing.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Shaky Head Baits
5. Drop Shot
The last of the bottom baits that we’ll discuss is the drop shot. Drop shots do something the rest of these baits can’t do—present a suspended bait that can be worked stationary. With a shaky head, Texas rig, jig, and Ned rig, you can put a bait in the middle of a bed and let it sit there if you want. Often times, this will inevitably annoy a bass into biting. But you can’t really work the bait all that much. With a dropshot, however, you can drag the weight into the bed and then wiggle and work the bait around as it suspends right overtop the eggs and right in the fish’s face. This works really well on spots and smallmouths, and can be used as a last resort sometimes to get a reluctant largemouth to bite.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Drop Shot Bait
Related: Best Drop Shot Rods, Tested and Reviewed
6. Wacky Rig
A wacky rig is the ideal bait when the fish are bedding shallow and the bite is really tough. Taking a soft-plastic stickbait like a Gary Yamamoto Senko and rigging it to fall horizontally creates a super-subtle approach that appeals to largemouths, smallmouths, and spotted bass. This technique undoubtedly works best on largemouths though that are spawning in shallow water and are easily spooked. In this situation, instead of looking for a bass on a bed, stay back far from where you believe there could be a bass bedding and cast or skip your bait to that location. If you present a wacky rig to enough dock posts, stumps, and holes in vegetation, you’ll catch some big bedders.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Drop Shot Bait
7. Floating Worm
A floating worm is similar to a wacky rig, in that it is a very subtle technique. But this presentation is oriented on the hook like a weightless Texas rig and then fished horizontally, where the wacky rig is rigged horizontally and allowed to fall vertically. This difference makes a wacky rig better for fishing targets and a floating worm better for working through areas. Sometimes, bass will spawn out in the open, on shallow points and humps and in the backs of pockets. These are all great areas to cast a floating worm around. Walk the bait back and forth along the surface or just below it and keep an eye out for any sign that a fish is headed toward the bait or has eaten it. When you see this, drop your rod for two seconds to make sure the bass has the bait completely and then set the hook.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Floating Worm
8. Frog Bait
There are several topwater baits that work really well during the spawn, including Devil’s Horses, Spooks, and buzzbaits, to name a few. But the best topwater for bed fishing has to be the hollow-body frog. Frogs can be cast a long way and fished ultra slow, and they have strong hooks. With the ability to walk these baits back and forth almost in place, you can throw one deep into areas where you can’t get other baits, work the lure up to a piece of cover, and then drive a bedding bass mad by walking it back and forth. When the bass finally bites, the hooks are up to the task of pulling big ones out of and through any type of cover. You’ll want to pair this bait with braid too. Forty-pound test is sufficient 95% of the time.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Frog Bait
Related: Frog Fishing: 15 Ways to Catch More Bass on Topwater Frogs
9. Glide Bait
A glide bait is not typically talked about when discussing baits that are best suited for bed fishing. But when it comes to search baits, there aren’t many better than a glide bait. Search baits are lures that can be used to cover water while looking for areas with concentrations of bass. You can take a glide bait and put the trolling motor on medium and just go down the bank during the spawn in hopes of drawing a big bass to the surface to reveal itself as the bait crosses the bed. Then, you can usually turn around and pitch a Texas-rigged soft plastic back to where the fish was and get it to eat. There are even some occasions where the bedding bass will actually eat the glide bait right away instead of just swiping at it, which makes things even easier.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Glide Bait
10. Swimbait
A swimbait is a fantastic option for sight fishing. There are times when you find a bass on bed that simply will not respond to other lures. The bass will come and go or make wide sweeping circles around the bed, seemingly feigning disinterest in your offerings. But, make no mistake, the bass does not want you or your baits around. Still, the fish won’t commit to anything. This is when breaking out a 6-inch long or longer swimbait can turn the tide.
The bass may have been able to resist the Texas rigs, drop shots, and shaky heads, but when a big swimbait lands in the middle of the bed, that’s usually when the attitude changes. The bass will start to become more aggressive, T-boning the bait and sometimes even eating it. But, even if the bass won’t actually eat the swimbait, it’s still usually enough to tick the fish off. Then when you toss a Texas rig back into the bed, the bass can no longer let the offense go unpunished.
Recommended Bed-Fishing Swimbaits
