I made trips to Lake Fork on Tuesday and Thursday this week. Both days were beautiful, mild and sunny with light winds. I saw water temps as warm as 72 degrees. That, as well as the changes in the fishing, is telling me we’re moving toward the end of this year’s spawn at Lake Fork. As late as things got started this year, I really thought the spawn would run longer this year. But that’s obvious that’s not the case. When things finally warmed up, they warmed up so much that the water will soon be too warm for most bass to want to spawn in. If they don’t get it done soon, they likely won’t get it done this year. The spawn is still in full on mode right now, but the decreasing size of the fish doesn’t lie. It will soon be over, except for a few stragglers.

And like always in this part of April, the number of fishermen on Fork is incredible. So the fishing pressure is intense. In spite of constantly being near other boats this week, I still had a blast and caught a lot of fish. I caught 12 bass Tuesday and 11 bass Thursday. But they definitely averaged smaller than I’ve been catching. On Tuesday, I managed two 5 pounders, and three others that went over 4 pounds, but on Thursday, none of the fish I caught were quite 4 pounds. Now don’t get me wrong, sight fishing for and catching a 3 1/2 pound bass on finesse tackle is still a blast, and I’ll keep making my Fork trips as long as I can catch these, but when the truly large bass start getting too wary to stay on a bed and take a bait, it’s a sure sign that the end of the spawn is coming. I’m probably going to make another trip or two to Fork next week, but after that, we’ll see. By then, it might be time to move my fishing back to Cedar Creek, and go after crappie and post spawn bass.

This was one of two 5 pounders I caught Tuesday.