FISHING
THE
PRESPAWN
HIGHWAY
3 SCenaRIoS FoR LoCaTInG STaGInG
BaSS on “ReST SToPS” aLonG TheIR
TRanSITIon InTo SPaWnInG aReaS
T
By Joe Sills
ILLuSTRaTIon By kevIn hanD
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2018 I FLWFISHING.COM
he road trip usually begins when the water tem-
perature approaches the low 60s, or even soon-
er in some waters. Bass, often waiting some-
where in deeper wintering areas, are compelled by
environmental changes to begin their transition to
spawning flats. During the big migration, says FLW
Tour veteran Mark Rose, they “loiter” at rest stops
along their prespawn highways, waiting and foraging
until the spawning flats can provide what they need
for a successful spawning season.
“Prespawn highways are ditches leading up to
spawning flats,” Rose notes. “If I could draw a picture
of one, I would draw a bay with a little channel com-
ing out of it, then a drop-off with a stump or three or
four on it. That channel is the highway, and before
spawning, a fish is going to stage on that drop-off
beside the stump.”
Rose knows this scenario is accurate because he
keyed on several types of prespawn highways when
he claimed a 2017 FLW Tour win at Lake Guntersville
in early February.
Rose wasn’t the only pro to tap into the prespawn
highway pattern in 2017. Birmingham pro Barry
Wilson ran similar patterns at a Tour event on Lake
Cumberland and a Costa FLW Series tournament on
Lake Chickamauga and narrowly missed out on wins.
Still, the two second-place finishes netted him close
to $50,000.
Rose and Wilson are experts at identifying spring
travel routes and the staging stopover areas that bass
use along the way. For the most part they rely on
three strategies during the prespawn, and suggest
that these approaches will work on any body of water
to help catch big stringers.
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