March madness isn’t just for college basketball fans. March also is the top month to catch a largemouth bass as big as Texas.

Why, you might ask? The same fish are in the lakes year-round. It’s not like they spend summers in Alaska or winter in the Virgin Islands.

The fish are out there all the time. For nine months of the year, they’re not quite as heavy or nearly as accessible to the average angler. Like a mature whitetail buck that throws caution to the wind during a brief reproductive flurry each fall, big bass move shallow to spawn during the spring.

Thirteen of the top 50 bass ever reported in Texas were caught in March. March bass madness related to the life cycle of the fish, TP&W fisheries researcher Dick Luebke said.

“The peak of the spawn varies considerably from one part of the state to the next,” said Luebke, who is stationed at Heart of the Hills Research Station near Kerrville. “In our area, the peak probably occurs in April. Down south, it’s much earlier. In east Texas, the epicenter of Texas bass lakes, it obviously peaks in March.”

All big bass are females, and the big fish are at their peak weight when full of eggs. A 10-year-old fish that measures 25- to 27-inches long and weighs 12 pounds in July may gain 10 percent of her body weight in egg mass.

There’s a reason largemouths produce so many eggs. Bass are multispawners and usually will not deposit all their eggs at one time. This is nature’s way of protecting the species against inevitable problems such as late-season cold fronts that retard egg development or dropping water levels that leave shallow fish nests high and dry.

“Bass spawn in our public lakes from the first warm weather in February well into May,” Campbell said. “We’ve even documented bass spawns in the fall. Bass will spawn in water as cold as 55 degrees, but the ideal water temperature for rapid egg development is 65 to 68 degrees. That usually occurs in March, and that’s why we see more big fish caught in March.”

March is also when spring typically arrives in Texas. More fishermen are on the water this month, enjoying the warmth. More fishing pressure means more fish being caught. Fishermen are more efficient at catching fish in shallow water, and this is the time of year when fishermen and big fish converge in the shallows.

Soft plastic lures — plastic worms, lizards, craw worms, Slug-go-type lures, etc. — have fooled the most lunkers. Of the soft plastics, plastic lizards are tops for big bass.

When you look at the list of the 10 biggest March bass reported caught in Texas, Lake Fork dominates with 80 percent of the catch. All those fish are bigger than 15 pounds, however.

Most bass fishermen would simply like to set a personal-best big fish. March is the time to get it done, and most of the state’s sizable public lakes have produced bass weighing at least 10 pounds.