bass spawning on Barkley/KY yet?

I just got back from fishing the weekend on Barkley. We did all right but the fish seemed scattered. We caught 5 keepers each day up to 4 lbs and quite a few small ones to go with them. Most of the better fish we caught were shallow and a few did have "rub" spots on their tails but we didn't catch any that looked like had eggs. I also did not notice any obvious nesting fish although the water around the bushes was on the low side. Do you guys think these shallow fish are the early spawners maybe males thinking about nesting or has the spawn started on the big lakes? I was north of the bridge and I have a feeling the answer maybe different for the south.

We also played around with crappie a bit but couldn't find any shallow. The few we caught were out off the banks on deeper brush. I am thinking they may have spawned out by now.

kc

I think some bucks startin to go into rut JMO

Last Monday and Tuesday some big famales were caught in very shallow water in the very backs of bays. Can't say what they were doing but I assumed spawning:)

I caught one fish that I saw on a bed for sure.

Fished North Barkley last weekend and caught our share of keepers off 2ndary points. Wind seemed to be the key for us. Biggest was only 3lb5z and only one fish had a red tail. Question: When fishing these "lead in banks"...Is this a slower prensentation??? Carolina rigs and JnP?

We fished a few secondary points mostly up on the banks with cranks and tubes. We didn't get the first hit on any kind of soft plastics but we did catch several small fish on the cranks. They seemed to want something moving to trigger them. In hind sight, on one point I was on I was sitting in 12 - 14 foot of water and saw many fish suspended 8 - 10' on the graph below. You never know but if they were bass I wonder how to fish them suspended like that? Jerk baits? Swim baits? Cranks? I remember several years ago in April catching bass on spinners by making long casts to the bank and slow cranking them in. I figured they would get down 5 or 6 feet and the bass would take them about half way to the boat. I bet those fish were suspended out off of the banks as well.

kc

[QUOTE=mess;324545]Fished North Barkley last weekend and caught our share of keepers off 2ndary points. Wind seemed to be the key for us. Biggest was only 3lb5z and only one fish had a red tail. Question: When fishing these "lead in banks"...Is this a slower prensentation??? Carolina rigs and JnP?[/QUOTE]

Most of the time it seemed, I caught fish on red eye shad in sexy shad at the same time

I couldn't stop catching them on soft plastics. Only a few keepers but over 20 right around the 14" mark - enough to make me mad they weren't a half inch or so bigger. I think the key to fishing soft plastics, is you can never go slow enough, sometimes taking several minutes for each retrieve. Most of them on a texas rig, a few on c-rig, and a few on weightless and senkos. I only had one of those with some markings on the tail - so I think they are still working their way up there. I only had a couple on crankbaits, but I would work around those crankbait hits with some plastics and usually get a few more.