One of the banes of bed fishermen is empty beds.
The obvious conclusion is that the spawn is over, and you might as well pack up and go home.
But according to Dennis Tietje, a bunch of empty beds isn’t necessarily a harbinger of things to come.
“What we see is the males come in and make the beds” Tietje said. “You’ll go up shallow one day and see fish on beds all over the place, and then two days later — nothing.”
Having the luxury of fishing a lot of lakes during the middle of the spawn on the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament trail, Tietje has observed lots of peculiar bass behavior that he now applies to Toledo Bend.
“Those males will actually leave the beds for a little to go out and court the females,” he explained, “You come back a couple days later and you’ll see them paired up on the beds.”
So just because you don’t see any fish on the beds this April, that doesn’t mean it’s over. According to Tietje, lack of bass on the beds might just mean that they really haven’t even gotten there yet.
“Empty beds don’t really matter until phase three of the spawn,” Tietje said. “Usually, that’s April on Toledo Bend, but I don’t expect empty beds to be much of a problem until we get on into May this year.”