Hey all!  Man, am I glad the weather's finally warming up around here.  Yesterday I caught my first bass since last October.  Been too long!!!

I fished a 4 acre pond over lunch for about an hour and a half.  I caught 7 bass...BUT the biggest one was all of 7".  All of them hit a Strike King rocket shad (small spinnerbait), with a pretty slow hurky-jerky retrieve, within 10 ft of the bank.  And all were caught along a 100 yd stretch of bank on the east side of the pond.  I tried bigger spinnerbaits and made a lot of casts to deeper water but didn't get any hits.  I tried fast and slow retrieves and bouncing off the bottom.  So here's my question....

Where are the bigger fish?  Do you think they are still out deeper and not actively feeding yet?  Or maybe they're on beds?  Would you have looked for them along the same stretch of bank?

What would you have tried in my situation?  Should I have gone to something other than the spinnerbaits?  

From what I have seen on the Forum, it looks like all the big fish moved to Georgia, Florida, Texas and California!

If there are any left in your pond I suspect they are still deeper and sluggish. Things will pickup shortly. Traditional spring baits are the ticket.

Very funny, RW  

I spent two days last week on Crescent Lake and Santa Fe Lake in north central Florida.  The big ones weren't there either.  In fact, there weren't any fish there that I could find.  So they must be in Georgia, Texas and California.  

What is considered a traditional Spring bait. Consider me uninformed :-[

In the other guys boat

We found a few in Texas.

I'm probably a few weeks ahead of you here in Tennessee, but Rat-L-Trap type lures, spinnerbaits, flukes, and hard jerkbaits are working fair to good. I probably fish soft plastics too much, but they are red hot for me right now (Fat Ika, 6" Senko). I'm not getting a broad based bite, just bigger fish...I hate it when that happens...it's just early.

By the way, my partner at Fork, flechero, slayed 'em on a small swimbait (really a sassy shad), buzzbait and T-rigged lizard. I will probably break out the buzzbait this weekend to see what happens. I'm going to fish GYCB Laminated Lizards, too.

With all this new and fancy baits, people forget about the old clasic T-rigged lizard ( watermelon, pumpkin, junebug, black/blue). It's the first thing I cast out in spring.

I have a lot of good results  swimming a 4" grub( white, glow in the dark, chartreuse, yellow) on a 1/4 oz jighead, and small sbinnerbaits. Rattle-traps are good too.

Greetings Fatboy, we're in the same neck of the woods, and the little ones are moved up shallow.The spawning season will be upon us shortly. I personally don't fish for spawning fish. I like to find the bedding fish, and then back out to the first good depth change close to the spawning areas. Not all the bass will be on the beds at the same time, so the pre-spawnres and post-spawners will be out there at the first drop off. I find those fish much easier to catch then the ones on the beds. If you can get a jerkbait down to the level they're at, that would be my first choice. After that, senkos, ika, spinnerbaits, cranks, jigs, just about anything will work on a given day. Good luck, don't catch "em all.

Cheers,

GK

I fished a 4 acre pond over lunch for about an hour and a half.

I bet your boss loved that. ;D

And as far as the big bass question, I can tell you they're not in Jersey.