The First Warm Water Is Holding Fish in the Ugliest Places

What’s Biting

The water is still cold, but it’s finally moving in the right direction. Largemouth bass are sliding toward the northern ends of ponds, shallow coves, and protected creek arms where dark bottom and afternoon sun can push the water a few degrees warmer. Fish a suspending jerkbait, a black-and-blue jig, or a slow-rolled spinnerbait from noon until the last light. The first two hours after the sun hits the bank are usually dead; the best window is roughly 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In tidal water, striped bass are using creek mouths and the edges of deeper channels. Freshwater moving out on the ebb tide carries bait with it, and the last two hours of the outgoing tide are prime. Cast a white paddletail, small bucktail, or live herring where the current seam meets slack water. Redfish and speckled trout are also nosing onto shallow mud and grass flats on the first half of the incoming tide, especially under a bright afternoon sun. Shrimp imitation under a popping cork is hard to beat. Keep it moving just enough to look nervous, not enough to win a race.

The Main Column: Fish the Warm Side, Not the Pretty Side

Spring anglers love clean rock banks because they look like bass should be there. Sometimes they are. More often, the fish are in the ugly pocket: a dark ditch beside a sunny bank, a flooded brush pile, the back of a muddy pocket, or the lee side of a dock where the wind has pushed warm surface water.

Start with a suspending jerkbait in 4 to 8 feet of water. Work it painfully slow: jerk, pause five seconds, jerk, pause seven. If the water is below 50 degrees, make those pauses longer. A bass will follow a fast lure all the way to the boat and then refuse it like a man who just saw the dinner bill.

Once you locate one fish, slow down with a 3-inch green-pumpkin worm on a light Texas rig. Use a 1/8-ounce weight in shallow water and drag it through the cover instead of hopping it. Most bites will feel like the lure has picked up a wet sock. Set the hook anyway. Wet socks don’t usually swim off.

Last spring, I watched a ten-year-old kid on the next boat catch the biggest bass of the morning while three adults—including me—threw every fancy contraption in the box. He had a red-and-white bobber, a small circle hook, and half a night crawler drifting along a sunny seawall. The bobber vanished beside a drainpipe, and he calmly reeled in a four-pound bass while his father shouted instructions nobody needed. The kid grinned and said, “I knew it was there.” Naturally, he then caught two more while we pretended to be studying the wind.

Dock Talk

• Cold water makes line visible. Use 8- to 10-pound fluorocarbon for jerkbaits and light worms unless you’re fishing heavy cover.

• On an outgoing tide, cast upstream into the current and let the lure sweep naturally across the seam. Don’t fight the river.

• Tactical advice: find the warmest water you can measure, then fish the slowest lure in it. If you can’t feel bottom, you’re probably fishing too fast.