I got out Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday this week and started with water temps in the upper 50’s on Tuesday. I mainly fished inside Shoal and Bald Ridge creeks this week. I caught a few fish with a spinnerbait around docks in the backs of pockets early in the morning and out on windy points later in the morning but the real numbers came from a shaky head on docks in the afternoons this week and also topwater on points. If you really want to sharpen your shaky head skills, now is the time because there are a lot of fish on the docks in the afternoons and the shaky head is a great tactic right now with these active fish. I’ve been catching a lot of smaller fish on the shaky head but every once in a while I’d get a nice one. For my shaky head I’m mainly using a 1/4 ounce Spotsticker Screwball Shaky in green pumpkin with a dark colored BPS Tournament Series 6″ trick worm. I’ve been dipping the tail of the worm in a little chartreuse garlic dip. You can see a picture of the trick worm color below. I like the 6 inch because it cuts down on dinks but I’m sure the smaller worm sizes would work great for better numbers. I’m using my light spinning gear with 6-7lb fluorocarbon. I’ve just been pitching and dropping the worm around the edges and inside slips as well as up in the shallow gaps between the docks. Docks with rocky shoreline has been the best producer for me. To me this is finesse fishing and kinda reminds me of drop shot fishing as you’re mainly fishing by feel and most of the time just feeling for a small tap. A lot of times the fish just picks up the worm and starts swimming off with it so I watch my rod tip and line angle and keep the slack out of my line as much as I can. Most times when the fish swims off with the worm it just feels like spongy weight and that’s when the hook set comes in. I probably have just as many missed hook sets as I do good ones but the shaky head in the afternoon around docks has been a lot of fun this week for numbers.

I didn’t fish yesterday but when I got out around 9:30 this morning (4-1-2016), water temps were in the low 60’s and the topwater was on! It pretty much started on my third cast and I caught some pretty nice fish out on points and over brush today, plus I left them biting. It stayed overcast which kept the topwater bite going throughout the day. There was also just the right amount of chop on the water and I was setting the boat up wind and casting down wind across the points and then bringing the popper back against the wind. I did a lot of popping, splashing and waking to get the fish to come up and I saw very little surface activity other than when they would come up to whack the popper. If I had a brush pile marked out on a point I positioned the boat up wind of the brush and cast the popper down wind and brought it back over the brush pile and caught fish at just about every stop. I did the same thing with the spinner bait this week and also caught fish over brush when the wind kicked up to high for the popper to work on the points. If the water temps continue to climb I think the topwater bite should do well and I think the bass should stay on the docks for a while. Here’s a few pics and a little bit of video from this week.