Freshly crowned REDCREST 2026 champion Jacob Wheeler's "Top Baits of April" breakdown is one of the more useful monthly videos for US bass anglers trying to match their tackle to the spawn phase of their local lake. The 2026 edition, filmed just before his Table Rock win, argues that April fishing is dictated by spawn timing and that three baits cover most of the water across Tennessee, Texas and the Midwest.
"April is one of my favourite months," Wheeler said. "Whether you're in Tennessee or even in where I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, typically April was the month that kicked off when the fish really pushed up and started spawning."
Bait number one is a chatterbait. Wheeler runs two colour options — bluegill patterns (green pumpkin, black-blue) for shallow bed fish, and white for the shad-spawn tail at the back end of the month.
"When the fish are shallow like this, they're going to be protective of their beds and they're going to be wanting to push away bluegill. This is why I'll typically pick up a bluegill-coloured chatterbait when they're shallow."
The white version earns its keep at the other end of the spawn window.
"The shad spawn starts to happen towards the end of April. A lot of probably 50 per cent of the bass have already spawned in some of these lakes and there's still 50 per cent left, you're going to have half post-spawners and half spawners still getting ready to go up."
Wheeler flagged the lunar windows for the month.
"Typically those are going to be your two time frames when the fish are going to pull up the biggest — like the biggest wave should pull up."
"This is going to be if you're a beginner and you're just trying to understand how to get a couple bites in the month of April, this is going to be the number one rod that I'm going to have on the deck for you."
The specific hook-set is not the usual snap.
"When a fish does bite it, make sure you let them have it for a second. One, two, three. And then you don't snap set, you pull set."
Bait number three is the Neko-rigged worm — a finesse option for fish sitting slightly deeper or for anglers casting to specific laydowns and docks.
"A Neko I can fish a little bit deeper. In this situation I can throw this bait in 3 to 20 feet of water, but I'm able to skip it around docks. If the fish are spawning a little bit deeper, if I'm casting around specific targets and I want to get it down there a little bit faster, a Neko is a really good bait to do."
For Australian anglers reading across, the April/May transition lines up with the southern-hemisphere October/November bass spawn, and the logic — bluegill-colour vibrating jigs for bed fish, finesse worms for shallow pockets, a slightly heavier finesse option for deeper targets — is an easy translation. Wheeler's credibility on the topic also ticked up hard last week. He won REDCREST 2026 at Table Rock Lake with a Championship Round built around the same spawn-phase logic he laid out in the monthly video.
