The Water Is Warming—Put Your Bass Bait in the Bank’s Kitchen

What’s Biting

Late March is the hinge of the season. In clear lakes and farm ponds, largemouth bass are moving from winter holes toward staging flats and protected coves. Look for water in the 55- to 62-degree range, especially on the northern bank where the afternoon sun has been beating on it all day. A suspending jerkbait, green-pumpkin jig, or weightless soft stickbait will do the job. Fish from late morning through the last hour of light, not at dawn just because that’s when your alarm went off.

In tidal creeks, redfish and black drum are nosing around muddy shallows on the incoming tide. Cut shrimp, crab pieces, or a small paddletail under a popping cork will find them. Start two hours before high tide, when the water pushes bait into flooded grass and oyster edges. The outgoing tide is better for ambushing fish along creek mouths and drains. Tide is not decoration on the tide chart. It is the conveyor belt.

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

Prespawn bass want three things: warmth, food, and a nearby escape route. That means the best water is usually a sunny pocket beside deeper water, with a ditch, point, or creek channel close enough for a bass to retreat when the weather turns rude—which it will.

Start with a jerkbait and work it painfully slow: two short snaps, then a pause of five to ten seconds. If the water is colder than 58 degrees, make that pause longer. Bass often eat it while it sits there looking like it has forgotten why it was born.

Once you get a bite, pick apart the area with a compact jig or Texas-rigged creature bait. Cast past the target and drag the bait into it. Do not launch a grenade at the fish’s head. A 3/8-ounce jig with a craw trailer is hard to beat around laydowns, chunk rock, and the first outside grass line.

Last week, a boy fishing with his grandfather stuck his first bass on a weightless five-inch worm. The fish was barely longer than the worm, but the boy hollered like he had hooked a tarpon. Then the bass wrapped around the trolling motor, the grandfather grabbed the wrong net, and I nearly fell out of my boat laughing. They landed it anyway. The boy kissed the fish, which is more respect than most tournament anglers show, and released it clean. His grandfather claimed it weighed six pounds. It weighed maybe one and a half. The lie was traditional, and therefore acceptable.

Here is the tactical advice: when the water is cold, fish the bait slower than your pride wants. Your best bite may come from a lure sitting dead still beside the warmest piece of cover in the lake.

Dock Talk

• Check water temperature at the back of coves, not just at the ramp. Two degrees can change the whole bite.

• Replace dull jerkbait hooks now. Spring bass do not owe you a second chance.

• On an incoming tide, work the flooded grass edge. On the outgoing, fish the drain. Simple beats fancy before coffee.