Spring draws many types of fish toward the banks of rivers and lakes, creating a great opportunity to scour shoreline cover with ultralight lures for fast, fun action from a mix of fish species. Depending on where you call home, you may catch bluegills, shellcrackers, crappie, white bass, yellow perch, rock bass or any number of other panfish.
You’ll also hook an occasional hefty largemouth and smallmouth, causing the drag on an ultra-light reel to sing and putting your 4-pound-test Silver Thread and your fish-fighting skills to a test.
Early in the spring, most action will occur beneath the surface. Great crankbaits for mixed-bag panfishing include Rebel Tadfries, 1 1/4-inch Bomber Fat As and Cotton Cordell Wee Shads. Cast around docks, laydowns and other shallow shoreline cover or troll slowly across stump-covered flats or beside riprap banks.
To dig a tiny bit deeper or give the fish a softer touch, work the same banks with YUM 1 1/2-inch Wooly Beavertails and Wooly Curltails and 2-inch Vibra King Tubes. Fish these baits on 1/16-ounce leadheads, casting to the shore and working the soft-plastic offerings slowly down the slopes. To slow the fall even more and add flash, rig the leadhead on a small safety-pin-style spinner.
If the water is sufficiently stained to allow you to get close to the fish, a great way to present small YUM baits slowly and very tight to fish-holding cover is to use a long crappie pole and drop an offering straight down from the tip of the pole. With a long pole you can drop a jig into holes in brushpiles, work very close to riprap and suspend an offering right beside dock post or bridge piling.
As spring progresses, panfish will become more aggressive. As more aquatic insects begin hatching and terrestrial insects begin finding themselves out of place and in the water, the fish will begin looking up in search meals. From late spring all the way through fall, tiny plugs can create huge fun when they are worked across the surface.
A few of the best lure choices any time you see any surface activity are Rebel Crickhoppers, Big Ants and Bumble Bugs along with the same tiny Bomber Fat As used as subsurface offerings during early spring. All are shallow-running crankbaits that dive and wobble when cranked steadily, but they float naturally.
For surface fishing, a couple types of presentations tend to work well. One is to let the bait rest initially and then work it back with a series of twitches and pauses. Gentle twitches make the lure dance on the surface. Sharper twitches pull it under momentarily. An alternative retrieve, which sometimes is extremely productive, is to reel slowly with the rod held high, causing the bait to wobble on the surface and create a wake.
Strikes often are smashing and too quick to reveal much about the fish. You have to battle whatever is on the other end of the line to find out whether it’s a bull bream, a largemouth or some other kind of fish!