The spawn is on, and many bass have already laid eggs this year. In some lakes, though, you are still dealing with pre-spawn bass. These are hungry fish — the males are feeding up looking to find a spot to dust a bed, and the females are feeding up to get ready to lay their eggs. Spawning fish aren’t hard to locate — you can see the beds. But if the fish are still pre-spawn, look for bait fish and clear water. That will get you some grade-A action.

Last Sunday I took the boat out and looked for an area to fish. The previous weekend I had been out on the same lake and fished some of my old haunts, but caught nothing. Matter of fact, I didn’t even get a bite. So I decided to run to the other side of the lake, where I had not fished in years, and try my luck in some of the kicker trails through the grass beds. The nice thing about the lake I was on is that there are some wide kicker trails in these grass beds that offer very convenient lanes for the fish to use to go back and forth into spawning areas.