With the water levels returning to normal and temperatures on the rise, you can bet that bass will be heading to the shallows to spawn. Sight fishing can be fun and challenging.
There are many areas of the lake where bass spawn every year. I spend a lot of time standing on my trolling motor set on high, just plowing along banks looking for beds. Usually, when you find one, there will be more nearby. Once you’ve blown through a likely spawning area, it’s often a good bet to just keep going and look for another one, but make a mental note, or a GPS point, of exactly where those beds were. Let that area calm down for a while, then come back and make long casts to it with a weightless Gambler Ace, a Senko, or a Fluke. You may very well get those bedding bass to bite before you ever actually see them; if not, move in slowly!
Shallow water anchors, like Minn Kota Talons or Power Poles, are great gadgets for anchoring your boat in place to sight fish, but a much less expensive, and very effective option, like Boat Sticks will keep you in the sight fishing game for a lot less money. However you do it, you must be able to keep you boat positioned to make repeated casts to a bedding bass.
Rarely do they pounce on your lure the first time it hits the bed, but it does happen sometimes. Be prepared to try dropping a variety of Texas-rigged plastics on the bed to coax a bite. A lizard is always a good bet, but so many others will work too. I recommend using a 3/8 oz. tungsten weight for this; the heavy weight keeps the bait in one spot so you can shake it and entice the guarding fish into biting.
Good fishing and God bless.
CAPT. RANDY “C-NOTE” CNOTA
C-note Charters
Panama City, FL
cnotecharters.com
(229) 834-7880