Peggy and I did some lite fishing in-between Martinez Lake and the dam over the weekend. Water temperatures in the current averaged around 73 degrees and lakes and backwaters averaged around 74.5 degrees. Daytime air temps have been in the 90s, so expect the water temps as well as vegetation to grow exponentially in the upcoming month.


For our first day out we fished out in the current, but quite honestly there wasn't much going on. I am going to blame much of that on the recent high water flows, which have dramatically re-arranged the bottom contours of the river in many, many areas.


Most of the sand bars got "topped" by the current, as well as spread over a greater surface area, causing prior depressions to fill and creating an overall flatter river bottom. I found one sand bar that grew by almost an eighth of a mile, so while the fishing areas in current have been altered quite a bit, we maximized our bang for the buck by taking time on the water to re-adjust our GPS maps of the river.


But enough about sand -- on the second day we stayed away from the main current and scoured a few of the lakes. Ironically, lakes that were getting greater amounts of water flow during the recent water push were still pretty mucky looking. It didn't matter if you were on the southern or northern ends of the lakes; most bodies of water were just dirty looking.


With the bass, in dare I say... post spawn, and on the heels of massive flooding, finding 'em in the lakes was as challenging as ever. We worked the almost mired up banks near areas that previously held pre-spawn as well as spawning bass, and there wasn't a bite to be had -- not even a charge from a bluegill.


We later shifted our efforts to locating cleaner waters, and voila! While the banks were still pretty inactive, we did locate bass far from the banks at approximately 15-foot depths. The key that day was finding areas that had good underwater vegetation AND good water clarity. Bloody-looking silver rattle traps were getting the job done, though I wish I had allowed for more water time so I could experiment with some worms.


I would also like to add that I saw some extremely massive balls of baitfish this weekend. I always take that as a sign of being in a healthy fishing habitat.