The April PreSpawn really heated up along with the weather as the water temperatures climbed into the high 50’s and low 60’s. The spotted bass were getting super aggressive, and were attacking anything presented near to the territory marked for a spawning bed. The biggest problem associated to presenting a bait to these fish was the crumby driftwood blanketing the lake.
Driftwood Still Dangerous for the Unwary
Navigating the water covered with floating flotsam added an extra 20 minutes to and from the waters to be explored. The section of Lake Shasta I was covering is known as the Squaw Creek Arm. I had finished fishing the Pit Arm all the way up to the block where the river enters the lake. There was a little less driftwood on the Squaw, at least compared to the Pit, because the Squaw Arm is a wide expanse of water near the confluence with the narrow Pit, but extreme caution was still very necessary.
Some of my explorations had included days on the Sacramento Arm, Big Backbone, and Whiskeytown Lake.
During these excursions there were two other friends with me, Don and Adolph. Adolph had fished up the Pit, McCloud and Sacramento, and Don was with me up Big Backbone and all. We were doing quite well everywhere we tried, but again, the darn driftwood was adding a lot of extra time to our outings. I did spend a day alone on Whiskeytown, and boated my largest Spot so far, a 19 1/2 inch beauty that went about 5 pounds.
Squaw Creek Produces Big Numbers
The water we had been fishing nearer Shasta Dam, (Dry Creek, Big and Little Backbone, and Sacramento), were producing some really nice fish. Most of these spotted bass were 15-17 inches and caught in 25-50 feet of water, but not in huge numbers. We were boating 5-10 fish per rod per outing. The fish counts jumped up dramatically as we began exploring water on the Squaw. Boating 20+ fish became the norm, but although the quantity of fish was higher, the number of smaller specimen was much higher. We also began using some new (to us) bait techniques next.
PreSpawn Baits
The first change of baits was leaving the drop shot with a worm to casting Keitech soft plastic swim bait with a #3 hook 1/8 oz
jighead. This bait could be worked across a rocky bottom, counted down to suspended fish, or swam just below the surface and always hooked fish. The 3.8 inch Sexy Shad was the big winner until the local tackle store ran out of them and wouldn’t be getting anymore anytime soon.
Next Bait Up
Andrew, a young fellow and new bassin partner at Phil’s Propeller and Tackle, showed me the next bait combo we were to use clear into the really hot summer months. This technique is called “Big Wormin” here locally, and involves Neko rigging a Senko 6 inch worm with a 1/8 or 1/4 ounce nail head weight. Totally Deadly!
There are far too many Gary Yamamoto Senko colors to list here, but the baits we found worked best for us were variations of the green pumpkin and watermelon. No matter where we went on Lake Shasta, these baits were boating 20 and 30 fish per outing per rod.
The Bite in April
The PreSpawn bite for spotted bass on Lake Shasta was taking on epic proportions in April. The driftwood on the lake was also in epic proportions. Soft plastic baits were accounting for big numbers of fish being boated, and the month of May would produce huge smiles, and more robust stories when asked Ketchinnee!
Mr Hook