A few days ago a friend and I caught maybe a dozen female LMB, almost all with bloodied tails and sometimes fins. This seems awfully late for LMB spawning, but maybe all the rain has disrupted normal patterns. Anybody else seen this?

I am watching several ponds of largemouth bass and spotted bass. By watching I get in and snorkel. The bass nested and produced a cohort of broods a little over 2 weeks ago. It has been relatively cold since until the last couple days. Another round of nest building has commenced. That maybe an indication of a second breeding effort. My ponds further north and experiencing a relatively late spring.

There is no sign of wounding on tails or other body parts. Substrate in these ponds is not particularly abrasive. Similar past observations on spotted bass and smallmouth bass in streams with gravel bottoms did not involve much in the way of damaged fins from digging. Damage that was evident seemed associated with fighting and other issues.

I'm still waiting to see mine bed. No sign of fry or beds anywhere, but the water has been pretty turbid since I turned on the aeration. I keep crossing my fingers one of my females might do something, but until yesterday they've been hiding. The one I've seen looks like she's still carrying eggs.

Some of mine were still guarding nests a week ago. They seem to always spawn late in my 2 acre pond.

A couple of my ponds are very clear, too clear for ideal fry production. From bank I can see nothing beyond depression that was nest and the daddy bass working back and forth. Fry not yet evident until I get right up on them while snorkeling. They will not be obvious until larger and have reason to forage higher in the water column.

Pond water near St. Louis just getting consistently into the low to mid-60s over the last week or so. Did catch some nice sized female LMBs full of eggs the weekend of May 4/5. Water still mostly turbid and have not spotted any nests at this point.

This is later than usual to reach the mid-60s in terms of water temps. Been a cold and wet spring here. Looking forward to drastically improved fishing starting this weekend. Been warm and sunny so far this week....finally. BM61.

Thanks for responses, guys. Sounds like late spawning, unusual but perhaps due to heavy rainfall this year.

We are getting a late start here in Nebraska, water temps were still in the upper 50s last week. The bulk of the LMB spawn usually occurs during the first or second week of May here but it hasn't really got going yet. In years past I have seen some LMB go as early as mid April, and some as late as the 3rd week in June.

Agree - later spawn likely caused by cold rain over several weeks. Multi inches of 50 F rain will change shallow water temps where spawning occurs.

Water temps haven't been the issue here. Even with the 9"s I got this past weekend my surface temps are in to low-mid 70s. Have been creeping close to 80 at times. They should have spawned long ago. Hopefully any little ones are just hiding until they get bigger. They sure have enough forage if any made it.

Last year I had the first successful lmb spawn after two prior years with no success. I saw lmb on their nest in May last year. And I was surprised to see them nesting in May. I thought it as late for spawning. This year it was different because I saw them nesting in March and April. And I may have seen a few guarding nest in early May of this year. A couple of the lmb caught in the 2 1/2 lb range still had eggs and some red/bloody fins 10 or 12 days ago. These were the smaller sized lmb in the 15" range.

I have broods in three phases of development as of yesterday. Some are in nest still as eggs. Some are swimming in middle of water column as larvae. I also have large brood that has already hit fry stage that is swimming just below the surface. What is interesting is the larger spotted bass fry are not swimming just below like the largemouth do. Spotted bass broods should bust up real soon while largemouth could go a couple more weeks.

Just walked back up from the pond a few minutes ago. Probably 2 weeks ago I netted up a pod of fry. Got about 100 of them in one swipe. I quickly released them because to me they were still way to small to identify species. I just took a swipe at them this morning and even though I was only able to get 3 in the net there was NO DOUBT they were about 1 1/4 inch long LMB!! Yaaay!! My second year in a row to pull off a spawn for sure!!