This year, the pond I've been fishing for 10 years now has a crazy high water level due to heavy rains and a clogged spillway. How will the high water affect the bass? My guess is that the usual high percentage spots might not be so high percentage with all the new aquatic real estate available to them.

Bass seem to love high water.  They push lil bait fish into the shallows and eat bugs and frogs and mammals exposed by the flooded habitat.

That's pretty much what I thought. New food sources would now be available to them. Previous established patterns fall by the wayside.

High water gets fish moving. I prefer it over drought waters. Start in the freshly submerged stuff.

The lakes I fish flood every year in the summer.  The water clarity goes to less than a foot, and all of my offshore spots are worthless.  The bass all move to the flooded shore.  In a way this is good.  I can catch them on buzz baits all day and all I have to do is work the bank.  I don't like it because before the flood comes, I have the bass located in small areas, and schooled up.  If I catch one I know I will catch more.  I rotate through these areas and can catch good size bass all day.

 

When the water is high the bass are spread out.  If I catch one in an area it doesn't mean there are more, it only means my lure passed by very close to that bass.  I cover as much shoreline as I can with black buzz baits, chartreuse and white spinnerbaits, bladed jigs, and  large soft plastics cast at specific targets.  I work the plastics slow, so I only cast them at targets I am sure a bass is on, such as a lone willow bush in a flat of grass.  A 7 inch weightless Senko left just sitting on the bottom next to a fence post, has caught me a couple of giants.  I am not a patient angler, so most of my time is spent covering water with the buzz bait.

 

Once the water has reached it's peak, the bass have gotten accustomed to their new surroundings, and maybe even cleared up a bit, the bass may not be as tight to cover and willing to chase a bait.  When the water is going up I have to run the moving lure right on top of them, or hit them on the head with the soft plastics.

I tend to just move up and fish the new shallow cover. seems like the bass move up with the water. Now I have seen times when it was a post frontal condition where the bass held to the structure where the water line was before it came up but that has been only once or twice.

Down here in south Florida especially the Everglades, bass will move into hundreds of thousand acres of sawgrass in the flats from the deeper canals.  These waters are almost impossible to reach without an airboat or a swamp boat with a long extended prop on a pole.  They feast on all the bugs, frogs, snakes, and small shellfish in the thick weed beds.  They go where the food is.