By Rory Aikens

The wind was howling just before sunrise at Lake Pleasant, making the idea of sight-fishing the bass beds seem a ludicrous quest. It wasn’t. Even with gusting winds from the north, there are often sheltered areas in some east-west running coves. Those sheltered spots almost invariably held our Holy Grail - spawning largemouth bass.

My fishing partner, Pat O’Brien, and I had not been on the Pleasant in more than a month. That’s a pretty sad statement in itself. We had no clue to the fishing pattern, much less the spawning pattern at the lake for our end-of-March fishing expedition. We were in for some surprises. With April knocking at the door, the spawn was well underway - possibly two weeks ahead of normal. That is, if there is a norm at Pleasant.

With the winds whipping the main body of the lake into white caps, we decided to try Desert Tortoise Cove, which is surrounded by "improved" camping spots. Typically, you don’t see spawners in Desert Tortoise until the last week of March or so. Not only were they there, we found them all along the sides of the cove.

Typically, the spawn will start way in the back of a cove where the water is warmest. As the season progresses, the days lengthen, and the water warms, the bass will start seeking beds further along the sides of the coves. Eventually, they seek spawning beds in small sheltered pocket coves and flats on the main body of the lake. We found a couple of bass in such spots.

The other dynamic at Pleasant is the flats on the upper lake tend to be two weeks to three weeks ahead of the coves near the dam. It’s almost like fishing two different lakes.

Those northern flats are shallower and typically have higher nutrient loading from streams, creeks, rivers and gulches that are conduits for runoff from places like the Bradshaw Mountains looming above the lake. Those nutrients catch the sunlight and help warm the water quicker. The down-lake coves typically have deep channels, fewer flats, and less turbidity. They stay colder much longer.

This year is slightly different. Or maybe the better term to use is "accelerated." For us, accelerated was just fine - fishing bedding bass is fun.

Once the female lays the eggs, and the male fertilize them, then the future daddy bass sticks around to guard the nest while the female goes off somewhere to recover from the ordeal.

Sometimes, the bass guarding the nest will be a good dad - aggressively chasing off any enemies, such as other bass, sunfish, carp, catfish, crayfish, and all the other predators that want a fish egg snack.

Other times, the mere sight of an artificial worm, lizard or grub will send the male bass scurrying to cover like a used boat salesman who sees an IRS agent coming. Other times, the offering will be attacked. Many times, the male bass will gently pick up the offering and drop it away from the nest.

You will even find male and female bass doing their mating business.

Getting them to respond to an offering can be an exercise in frustration. However, watching them is always entertaining. They are often more interested in procreating than eating, but not always.

Fishing the beds takes patience. It also takes time. After working a number of beds, all of a sudden there was almost no wind. The morning had waned. Noon was approaching.

We headed up lake to scout the northern coves. We were in for another surprise. There were only a few bass bedding in the very back of Bass Bay. The spawn was already well underway and the bedders had progressed to mid-cove and beyond.

Another surprise was how turbid the water was from the algae bloom that Pleasant experienced throughout the winter. Between a slight breeze rippling the water and the algae bloom, sight-fishing beds was not in the cards for Bass Bay. We figured the other northern coves might fare the same. We headed back down lake.

There was plenty of bedding bass in all the large mid-lake coves. It was more like fishing a late April spawn rather than a late March one.

A good thing to keep in mind when sight-fishing beds - don’t just rely on finding beds and fishing them. Continue to work your lures and explore water. I will typically catch lots of young males on the beds, but the larger males and females I often find while casting to both shallow and deep structure. When bass are staging for the spawn, they can be ravenous. So don’t forget to try for those stagers.

That strategy paid off for me while working one cut. The brush was so thick across the front of a little finger-like inlet that I had no hope of searching it for a bed. I cast in the soft-plastic jerkbait, gave it a quick snap of the rod to get it moving, then let it fall like a dying shad. The water erupted. I set the hook. A quality bass was on the line, or actually, striping off line.

There was lots of brush between the boat and the bass. I was using a lightweight rod with six-pound test Fireline. Horsing the bass through the brush was out of the question. With my heart thumping in my throat, I maneuvered the bass boat around so I could kind of lead it through a slight opening in the brush. Be darned if it didn’t work.

Even Pat got excited and wanted to know where to find the net. "Who cares, just lip the darn thing," I quipped. "We don’t need no stinkin’ nets." As Pat likes to point out, I am a little excitable when a big fish is on the line.

Even though it had looked (and fought) larger, it was only a 3.6-pound male. A larger female had spooked out of the finger cove when I caught the male. We took some pictures, then released it. It was a day full of bedding pleasant bedding surprises.