While fishing up the Corney Creek arm of Lake D'Arbonne a few spawns ago, I noticed a fish that kept swirling under the same cypress tree. After covering the 50 yards or so yards to get into casting range, I made a fateful mistake while turning to my fishing partner.

Since it's hard for Kenny Covington to tell where bass are spawning in dirty water, he tries to get them to swirl on a fast-moving lure like a spinnerbait. Photo by Chris Ginn.

"That's a caught fish!" I proudly exclaimed.

We worked on that fish for at least two hours before giving up on it. All the while we were steadily casting and changing lures, the fish continued to thumb its nose at us with swirl after swirl.

"You've got a lot more to learn about spawning fish," my partner said scoldingly. "We could probably walk up there and grab it with our hands easier than getting it to bite any of these baits scattered across the deck."

Come to think of it, we were a little bit too early for that bass actually to be spawning, a little bit too ignorant about how to catch it, and a little bit too confident that we were going to catch it just because it appeared to be on a bed. There's a lot more to catching spawning fish during the spring than meets the eye.

Louisiana is somewhat unusual in that there isn't really that much difference between fishing spawning bass anywhere from 33 degrees north latitude to the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, bass will begin spawning somewhere in south Louisiana, but the delay between south and north isn't that great.

Any spawning calendar would be measured in days rather than weeks. With that in mind, here's a breakdown of when anglers can expect bass to be spawning in their corner of the state, how to catch them when they move up and how to adjust to any variables that could throw off the bass.

SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA
If there's any part of Louisiana that you could point to as the one whose bass are the first to spawn, that would have to be the coastal marshes around New Orleans. Delacroix, Morgan City and Des Allemands have rebounded in a big way since the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Unfortunately, just as the bass fishing was beginning to get really good, another hurricane, Gustav, blew through southeast Louisiana, and reports of lots of dead bass were rampant. Thus, reported Covington bass pro Jason Pittman, the best spawn-fishing will take place in the many Florida Parish rivers that flow into Lake Pontchartrain.

"Any of them from the East Pearl west toward the Tangipahoa, Tickfaw and Amite will offer the most consistent fishing this spring," he said. "These areas weren't as affected by Hurricane Gustav as the coastal marshes, but the bass spawn in these tidal-influenced rivers is unpredictable at best."

Bass spawn in these north-shore rivers as erratically as weather moves through Louisiana. Anglers in this part of the state know what it's like to see a bass on the bed as early as late January, only to see not another one until the middle of February. The fish move up as soon as the water gets right, but variables like cold fronts, low tides or a potent combination of both can have them scratching their heads as much as it can the anglers that pursue them.