As early spring gives way to warming water and fish moving shallow, anglers must adjust. Gone are the days of early staging fish and chunking a rattling lipless crankbait on flats. Savvy anglers are looking for shallow water havens filled with 6-pounders locked on beds. Light line, tube baits, lizards and creature baits become the norm.

 

Experienced anglers and those that think outside the box know that this can also be a special time for topwaters and shallow crankbaits. We like a Rapala Original Minnow in 11S or 11G for this application. Generally speaking we use the 11S, silver, on  bright days and the 11G, gold on cloudy or overcast ones. Long casts are critical and a twitch, twitch, float retrieve works best. Outside grass lines and holes in the vegetation are prime locations. Don't be afraid to use a little heavier line for this approach. Fifteen-pound green Sufix monofilament is our choice.

 

 

Another great springtime strategy is shallow cranking. Baits like the Bandit Footloose or Series 100, a Strike King Mr. Money or a Lucky Craft RC 1.5 are great choices for this technique. We like to use a rod with a fairly quick tip in a 7-foot medium heavy action like the St.Croix Mojo Bass or Falcon Cara. Baits should be run with a VERY slow, stop-and-go retrieve and the rod should be in the 12 to 1 o'clock position. Likely targets are dead heads and grass clumps and deflecting off of the cover can triggers bites. Since you can see the bait in this application a high speed reel makes sense. We recommend a 6.3 or a 6.4 to 1 retrieve.  Erratic twitches of the rod during the retrieve can also ignite strikes. 

 

 

Thinking out of the box and trying techniques like those mentioned above can help put more bass in the tank.