Tried one of last year�s divers Saturday afternoon while it was still warm outside, but no sign of interest. Went to the Balanced leech and caught a few one pound or so bass, all about carbon copies, I�m guessing all males, up shallow covering a couple hundred yards of shoreline. Also got a few bonus Crappie and a rare bluegill on the size 2 dark purple Simi Seal and natural color wild turkey marabou leech.

Won�t be long until the bass should be after the deer hair divers. Last year it was mid March. Might be a little later this year with this late cold blast. Tied up some fresh ones today, seems like olive or some mix of Chartreuse and white worked best last year.

I love the divers you sent me last year and tied up a few of my own I hope to try soon. The ponds I usually fish are all filled with algae, snot grass, etc..., whatever you call the godforsaken [censored] that results from people over fertilizing their yard and having it all run off into the pond. I was out there today and if you were lucky enough to find a spot where the surface wasn't matted with algae, you still couldn't really fish because if your fly went more than about 3 inches underwater it got bogged down completely with vegetation. Since they weren't hitting topwaters it made for a very slow day. Hopefully with this warm stretch we are going to get they will wake up from their winter slumber and start hitting hoppers.

They started working better last week. It warmed up early in the week. I got a couple of little better bass than the little one pound fish while walking the shoreline and then a 4 pound fish that missed one of the solid olive divers above on the first cast and then connected on the second cast over the same submerged log. I would guess the fish had to be a female, but it wasn�t fat and eggy looking at all and was a little underweight looking for its length. I haven�t been out there again fishing since Wednesday.

So far, the fish are only responding to the olive divers and ignoring other colors. Maybe it�s an early in the season thing. Lost a 6-7 pound fish when it slipped under a log and busted the 1x tippet taking off with an olive diver. Tied up a few more olive ones and got some smaller fish out in the boat. My buddy fishing next to me was getting the same size of fish on plastic lizards and worms. He also caught a Crappie on a plastic worm.

The bushy divers above are tied on 1/0 Mustad stinger hooks. My buddy asked what they are supposed to represent. I say bullfrog tadpole or maybe some sort of mouse or other vertebrate. Maybe it�s just representing calories to the fish. Based on our outing yesterday, the females are mostly still recovering from the spawn or are actively spawning. There should be more post spawn recovered and hungry females in the mix for the days going forward. Things are progressing 2 weeks or so later this year than last or so it seems.

Caught a 21� 4.5# fish off the dock on the olive diver a little earlier today. Based on the Texas Parks and Wildlife length to weight chart, that fish should have weighed 5.6 pounds. Second better fish in a row that was underweight.