[bstark]

Was at Lake James bright and early Sunday morning. Started throwing topwater (zara spook, jr) on main lake humps and long, rocky points. The areas were loaded with shad, and smallmouth. Both blind casting and throwing to breaking fish produced good numbers, with a few good sized smallies. Topwater lasted until around 12, when it got really hot and the usual crowd of ski boats and jet skis came out, making it tough to fish the main lake humps. Switched up and went to the backs of coves and started catching largemouths, all on weightless rigged flukes. Caught some bigger largemouth occasionally but most were decent sized males guarding fry. Had a great day, managed between 15-20 fish, and probably missed as many on topwater. Sorry for the bad pics, not good at the selfie fish pic so gave up.

 

[gambusia]

Surprised there are already largemouth bass fry already.

Thanks for the report

 

[bstark]

Water temp started around 71, got up to 75, most of the fry I saw was way in the backs of coves, with a few largemouth on the ends of laydowns also

 

[vaporizor]

heck yea nice fish, there were big schools of shad around the islands on saturday, fish busting everywhere, sounds like your sunday was as good as my saturday minus the rain showers

 

[Juice780]

Surprised there are already largemouth bass fry already.

Thanks for the report

The largemouth have been spawning for a month now. They are probably done. I never could get on any bedding smallmouth. Every time I went I couldn't see as deep as I would have liked. Seems like the lake isn't as clear as it used to be. For some reason the largemouth spawn before smallmouth on James. It's backwards from what it is in the lakes up north.

 

[lewisfishing]

We've had lots of rain this spring and the lakes aren't really clear like usual. I suspect the smallmouth still spawned before the largemouth...its just a matter of the water temperatures and daylight hours...

 

[Juice780]

The largemouth normally spawn first on James for some reason. There is always a big wave of lm first before the first big wave of sm the come up. I have a buddy who wins about every tournament he enters in the spring up there and he swears by this.

 

[bstark]

Anybody have an understanding of when the shad may spawn on James? I've read the shad spawn shouldn't too far behind the bass, but haven't seen it in action on any lakes around here other than Boone over in Tennessee, that was in April a few years back if I remember right.

 

[Juice780]

They are spawning on hickory so I would assume they should be spawning on James with this warm weather