KY Lake Mid-March

I am now starting to prep for my first major trip of the year to KY Lake around March 15th. Going to stay with a Buddy who lives about 15 miles south of Murray. I'm not very familiar with the lake at all, only been on it a couple of times, each in summer. So never the less, this will be a new venture. I will be fishing the lake between the bridge on the state line and Blood River, putting in at the marina in a bay near the State Line bridge. I forget the name. Anyone got any recommended baits and techniques to prep with? I would like to get into some good pre-spawn bass action. Thanks for any help!

LBL side,pea gravel points,Jerkbaits Jerkbaits Jerkbaits = Big Brown fish this time of year. Be mindful of wind and lake conditions this time of year. It can get real rough.

Definitely the jerkbait! It's about the only thing I would use that time of year - commit to it and vary the retrieve until you figure out what works. Sometimes you have to pause for a really really long time! Typically I take a jerkbait and add Suspendots to it until it suspends perfectly. This way, I crank it down a few feet and let it sit......sometimes pausing up to 15 seconds....and it works! If you have the patience to figure it out, you can really whack'em!

Well its not my paitence I have to worry about, its the guys I'm going to be with. I would LOVE to catch a few big smallies. I'm just hoping that the weather warms before this time. We're due for some good weather. If not, I'm libable to be dodgeing icebergs :eek:

Very good advice from both these folks....especially the long pauses on the jerkbait.

You will be putting in at Cypress Bay. When you put in you can see a road bed to your left. Use a soft or hard jerk bait. (When fishing in Cypress Bay, you are in Tn. Water) As you leave Cypress Bay going north , be sure to fish
the left bluff walls. Fish all main lake points and secondary points in Blood River.
If you want smallmouth go on north and fish the pea gravel and large rocks around Smith and Duncan.
Good Luck

CYPRESS BAY thats it!!!! I've been thinking about that all day long and it has been killing me! I know those bluff walls you are talking about, I've actually had luck on those during the summer. I just hope that wind isnt whipping across the lake, BRRR! Thanks for all the help guys, to be completly honest with you, jerkbaits would had been the last thing to cross my mind. Any good patterns, and how long of a pause are you guys suggesting? You gota remember, I'm more a post-spawn and summer time fisherman, but I'm starting to really get into the year-round thing, now that I have much more time on my hands

Bluff walls and mainlake points are what you need to target. The ultimate would be a bluff wall/point near a shallow flat at the mouth of a bay or on the mainlake in general. On those warmer sunny days, bass will move up on those flats to feed, and when that happens you can start hitting them with rattletraps. But if its kind of cold, cloudy, and windy, those fish will slide a little bit down the drop, but will still come up for a jerkbait bite - how deep they are is your starting point on the pause length.....for instance if it's cold and they are deeper, you obviously want to pause longer, but if its sunny and warm, you can sometimes get by with a quick short pause...