Early Season Struggles

Most years in Ohio on my home lake the bass fishing starts to turn on in late March or early April. This year set up to be a late March start up because of the nice weather. Most years by this point I would be able to hit the lake with the jerkbait and catch fish until my arm was barley hanging on but so far this year that hasn’t been the case and it has me stumped. The bite is extremely slow but the ones I have caught have been quality bass.

I was last on the water on Wednesday afternoon and evening. It was pushing 70 degrees and the water temp that was 52 on Sunday was up to 56 degrees. All signs point to the bass moving out of the deep waters and into feeding mode as the pre-spawn gets fired up. In the four hours of fishing I only managed to catch three bass. So far this year I have caught an equal number of largemouth and smallmouth and all of them have been good quality fish. For now this is the mystery I am dealing with. My solution will be to keep grinding and looking for different areas. If the fish have moved up into the shallower coves I have not figured out how to catch them yet so it is leading me to believe they are not ready for that yet.

As of Wednesday the water clarity was pushing 8 feet after rains the night before and what vegetation there is is just starting to grow in the 10-12 foot depth range. So with the clear water and no vegetation what are the bass relating too? They are not shallow, not on the docks, not in the weeds, because they aren’t tall enough and not cooperating with my desire to fling my jerkbait all day. My goal this next week is to get something figured out and be able to run that pattern around the lake. Stick around and see it I can figure out the mystery. – Michael