finding active fish

[Guest the_mud_man]

Hi everyone. I just started to dig into the fishing articles  on the site,but Im going out tommorow and could use a few tips. Last year I found this spot on the lake early in the day that was between 3 to 7 degrees warmer than the rest of this lake(336 acre flood control lake with lots of rocks and weeds ) and in the early AM this place was deadly.

It has dried out dead catails,fairly large rocks and sand on the bottom.During the summer it has a lot of grass growing on it and at night the fishing is good. Anyway back to early spring  Wter Temp is about 50 to 57 degrees the site is on the shore from about 2 to 6 ft of water. Once noon comes the bass either turn off or leave.There is a drop off about 10 yards furthur from the shore to 18 ft. Do the active bass go deep because of the lack of cover in the spring or do the spread out over the shore. Because I spend the next few hours fishing the shorline with limited sucsess

[D.Taylor]

Is the water clear?

In the low light hours the bass are up on the flat feeding. In the high sun hours they will pull off the flat onto cover they can find on that drop off or will use the edge and suspend. Pull out and paralell the ledge with a crankbait.

This spot could be a spawning flat pay attention it on the next full moon there quite possibly be some nice ones sitting there all day.

[Guest the_mud_man]

Thank Mr D. There are no nests visible as of last week and I didnt see any fish fanning them but the gravel bottom seems to poinyt to a spawning area I think!!! Any way the water is stil in the low to mid 50s but we had some highs in the 70's this week well see what happens on Sat

[BassChaser57]

As Dave Fritts says, fish where the shallowest water meets the deepest water. This sounds like the fish have moved out to the first drop. Always try to find cover on structure and you should find fish.

[Chris]

They might be suspended off that drop off.

[Gatorbassman]

When we (humans) go from a dark area to a bright area our eyes constrict to protect the inside of the eye. A bass's eyes don't do this. They are fixed. They don't really like being in the bright sun so they look for a way to get out of the light. They will either look for shade in the shallows or go deeper to where there is lower light penetration. The exeption to this is during the spawn. Remember that this is only one of a whole book of thing that dictate where the will be.

Let me recommend a book that has helped me with being able to consistently find fish. It is called Advanced Bass Fishing by John Weiss. It was written back in the early 80's so some of the information about technology is out-dated but it is great. You can find it for fewer than 10 bucks on Amazon. It is great if you want to learn to fish deep water.