Early season lure choices for the shallows....

[CALVINIST]

What are some of your favs? Is it too early to fish with topwaters and fast retrieve crankbaits?

[RK]

Hiya -

Never too early for topwaters. Small prop baits like Tiny Torpedoes or subtle pencil poppers like a Gunfish can be a hoot this time of year. Key sometimes is LONG pauses.

Another great shallow water early season bait most people seem to have forgotten about is a good old #11 floating Rapala. Can twitch them like a topwater, slow roll them... Still catches fish as well as it ever did.

Wacky rigging is also definitely a great option in shallow water too, especially if you have fish located. Not great for covering lots of water as it's fairly slow though. But if you have them pegged, it's almost unbeatable sometimes.

Swim jigs also work really well. I prefer them to spinnerbaits more often than not. They're so versatile, especially when it comes to speed ranges. You can really cover a wide range with them.

As far as fast moving stuff, never hurts to try it. Case in point was opening day. I'd been fishing a hard swimbait fairly slowly and catching a few fish on it. Saw a spot I wanted to cast to and was zipping the bait in pretty fast to make another cast, and a 3# smallie woofed the thing right at my feet. Kept cranking it fast and ended up catching more fish on it going fast than I had been going slowly.

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[OTBASSER]

This last weekend topwaters weren't working for me but the bass sure were hitting the chatterbaits...caught 58 on saturday my self and between my three brothers they caught around 50 using spinnerbaits. Only a handful of them were on topwaters.

[fishuhalik]

I'm a big fan of lizards this time of year. If they're on their beds they'll eat it to defend the nest, if they're off the beds in deeper water they'll eat it cuz they know that the lizard's on it's way to a nest. It just seems that this time of year they can really close their mouths to other baits, and they'll just hammer a lizard. Shallow I fish 'em weightless, anything more than 3-4 fow I use a carolina rig.

[CALVINIST]

Thanks guys. Going to hit a shallow local lake tonight with carry in access. Probably stick with spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, x-Raps, and plastics. I'll post results if I catch anything good!

[fishuhalik]

BTW, how big is that bass in your avatar? Looks huge!

[CALVINIST]

It measured 20.5 inches and had a gut that looked like it swallowed a baseball. I'll bet it went over 6lbs. Caught on a small metro lake too!

[CALVINIST]

I had to stick to Chatterbaits last night, as the water was so filled with scum! Here's what I caught on my little metro outing. A few dink bass like this...

Some small sunnies like this...

And three pike. One was upper 20's, The largest was 31". It was very thick and tall and put up a great fight in the float tube! Here's the biggest one...

Look at how wide this beast is, must have been chowing on some sunnies...

I know there are some pig bass on this lake, I just didn't get any last night, oh well.

[Muddog]

Love them Flukes!