Early spring, late winter, or Pre-prespawn…whatever you call it, if you fish the right patterns you stand a better chance of sticking big bass and lots of them than at any other time of the year.

The key is identifying and dealing with the conditions you are faced with on a day to day basis. At this time of year your three biggest variables are water level, water temperature, and water clarity. A basic rule of thumb is to find protected coves and pockets with the clearest water and warmest temperatures even if the water is only one 1 degree warmer. That could be the most important 1 degree difference on the water. Or if the clarity goes from 2’ to 2.5’ and the water level rises by a single foot.

When you do find spots like that look for fish to come up and into those coves and pockets during the warmest afternoon hours in order to feed and explore. When they do come up spinner baits, crank baits, rip baits, jigs and small 4”-5” swim baits fished slowly should take some bigger and ore aggressive fish until they move back down.

For the rest of the day continue with spots like this, but once you find them step back and look for the deeper cuts and breaks adjacent to these warm pockets. Ideally the best of these types of spots should be 12-20’ deep and have some kind of connective structure to the shallow pocket, i.e. a fallen tree that straddles the depth line and can be used as an “escalator” to bring up bass on their daily visit to the shallows or rock piles, boulders, and breaklines that also straddle the depth zones.

These fish can be caught on football head jigs, weighted wacky rigs, slow sinking swim baits, and 4”-6” plastic worms on a drop shot rig. There are a lot of other baits that will also work like rip baits and deep diving crank baits but it’s important to keep your gear simple so you are able to focus your attention on finding the right spots first.

To reduce it further, if you only throw one bait, then make it a ½ oz. or ¾ oz. football head jig with either a double tail grub, trixie beaver, or YoMama trailer.

Remember, this early spring bite is the largest window in the bass’s yearly cycle to catch multiple big fish (5-12 lbs). Other than sight fishing during the spawn the majority of big fish and lake record fish in CA are caught in early pre-spawn. Whatever you do don’t be tricked into fishing for numbers of small male bass. I see a lot of guys who will throw Senkos of finesse worms for bites and if they don’t get them they move on. That’s a big mistake…you can do that most of the year so be patient and throw the right (bigger) baits. Then if you want numbers go for it, but don’t short change yourself now.

Good Luck!