Bass:1 Me:0

Today took a beating on me. I was the first one on the lake, had a ton of of confidence, and then got skunked. How did I get skunked in the spring? Beats me. I covered tons of water flipping a creature bait, throwing a spinnerbait, and tossin out a frog. The water was super high and debris was everywhere. Maybe the fish haven’t pulled up yet? I was fishing very shallow. Any suggestion would be helpful! Thanks in advance.

I went for a few hours earlier. Caught a few, but it wasn’t “good”. I had to fish really slow, making repeated casts to the fish over, and over, and over. I’m going back out here in a little bit to bed fish at a different lake. Hopefully
I have better luck.

Something I’ve picked up on is fishing where the fish were located before the high water. For Instance I was out last Friday and the water had just gone up a foot plus. Naturally I went as shallow as possible looking for the fish. I had poor luck and a hard time finding fish on beds. Next I pulled off and started fishing areas 2 yards or so off the bank and started catching fish. Fish that were already up on beds stayed on their beds even with the water up. Fish that were not on beds stayed in that area also. Two days later with the lake dropping I could again started to see those beds and the fish on them.

With the stable weather and rising temps this week the next wave of fish will move up and some will make their beds in the new shallow water. You may have just been a bit early to the shallow fish.

When lakes come up suddenly the bass almost always stay where they were previously at until the water level stabilizes. I remember watching a Bassmaster episode when they were at Texoma few years back and that was the case. It has held true in my experiences all these years. I fish a river oxbow and that's EXACTLY what the fish do when it comes up to quick..