By Alan Clemons

 
You have a major championship coming up more than two months from now, the seasons will begin changing by then and your last practice day on the water was Sunday.
 
So how do the Bassmaster Classic qualifiers prepare now for the championship on Lay Lake in late February?
 
“You’re practicing for something that’s impossible to fish for,” said Matt Herren of Alabama, who qualified for his second Classic and may be one of a handful of favorites to win the title. “I’ve seen the weather get pretty ugly that time of year. I’ve seen fish staging to spawn on Lay Lake in the last week of February. I have notes in my log books from years ago about that. It’s all dictated on the weather.
 
“The big thing during the practice (that ended Sunday) is all about learning the water and being able to know where things are so you can go back in February and piece things together.”
 
Classic anglers ended their early practice session last weekend and now the lake is off-limits until just before the tournament, which will be Feb. 19-21 with weigh-ins at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. The pros will be studying maps to further pinpoint areas they located and checked, scouring Web sites for changes and probably reviewing old tournament information for any little thing that might help.
 
Lay has hosted the Classic in 1996, 2002 and 2007, when Boyd Duckett of Alabama won by six ounces over Skeet Reese of California. Duckett had a kicker largemouth the first and third days – an 8-2 and a 6-9 – that propelled him to the title. He changed his strategy the week of the tournament from targeting mid-depth spots to a shallower pattern because the weather forecast called for warming temperatures following a cold spell.
 
That could be the case again this time around. Alabama’s weather in February can be fickle, with the chance for sunny skies and nice late-winter (or early spring?) temps or a frigid blast that puts a shiver in everyone’s liver. As the Classic draws near, the anglers will be watching the forecasts and planning accordingly.
 
But for now, Herren said, most of the activity has been to locate areas where bass may move once they get the notion to kick their tails and get going.
 
“Right now the bait is extremely deep, from middle portion down, maybe 22-25 feet deep,” Herren said. “You have some stragglers shallow that time of year, but the big thing is the migration of the spots, the bait and when they move. They played a big role in 2007 … but they’re crazy. They’ll bite one day and not the next.
 
“The thing about getting on the lake this far out is learning to navigate the lake, the channel swings, likely areas where they’re going to be. River fish don’t start that move until about Feb. 1 around here and the weather dictates how fast the progression is of that move. Right now the most important thing is learning your way around, so as you’re working through the process of locating fish you can understand where to go to next.”
 
Herren admitted he doesn’t fish on Lay too often these days. He lives closer to Logan Martin, the lake upriver on the Coosa River chain. But he did get on Lay to check some old haunts, look for some new ones and get a feeling for the lake.
 
“I haven’t fished hardly any on Lay in the last seven years,” he said. “I saw some things I saw years ago, and I saw some new vegetation that probably will factor in for some guys. Another thing I saw is the Florida bass that have been stocked during the Mark’s Outdoors tournament all these years, and those fish can be weird. We all know the weather can affect the Florida-strain, so that might be a factor, too.
 
“As far as the fish, I don’t even think about where they are right now. For something like this you look at whether it’s a natural lake, a tidal water, a man-made reservoir … those all have differences. For example, Red River last year a lot of guys were hunting migration routes. Is it a non-current lake? Will current play a role? You have to look at their habits. Bass have heredity traits of how they like to move. You have temperature and moon changes that affect the bait.”
 
It’s all a big puzzle, and the Classic field is starting to assemble the pieces. We’ll find out in two months who figures it out best and puts it together.
 
“Lay isn’t very big,” Herren said. “But it’s 48 miles long and has nine jillion nooks and crannies … there’s a lot of water. Once we get there, we’ll have some room to move around. There’ll be plenty of places to fish.”