Kentucky bass anglers gearing up for the spring should have no shortage of opportunities to catch some good fish this year. Many fisheries, especially in the state’s reservoirs, show excellent promise.

With any luck, the weather conditions Kentucky experienced last year will pan out this spring, and rainfall amounts will be closer to normal. What Mother Nature sends our way plays such a huge role in the ability of anglers to catch bass, even when various populations may be in superb shape. Last year, Mother Nature was tough on anglers from April through June — prime bass-catching times.

The spawning success for bass doesn’t have a lot of effect on the quality of fishing the very next spring. Young-of-the-year fish are too small to make it into the “catchable” size range in just one growing season, so it’s best to judge how fishing might be by looking back a year or two when predicting the upcoming year.

According to biologists’ reports from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), several major lakes should give anglers plenty of quality action this year. Two of those remain ongoing hotspots, and you can talk about them for largemouths in the same sentence: Kentucky and Barkley lakes.

KENTUCKY & BARKLEY LAKES

The bass-fishing heyday when heavier vegetation appeared on the lake may never be matched again, but biologists say both these reservoirs are back on the upswing.

“I don’t think we’ll hit the level we did when we had the milfoil develop several years ago, but we are seeing improvement in catch rates and quality on both reservoirs,” said KDFWR fisheries director Benjy Kinman.

“It’s taking more pounds of fish to win tournaments down there now, and that’s a good trend that some better bass are being caught from these waters. I expect it will continue through the spring season, and hopefully beyond,” Kinman said.

Reports coming in from biologist Paul Rister support that the upcoming spring season on Kentucky and Barkley should be good, and could be stellar. If this fall’s fishing was any indication, bass ought to be present throughout the lake.

“I’ve had lots of good reports of anglers catching fish — one from a pair of anglers who said they caught 50 in a night in shallow water on spinnerbaits last September,” Rister said.

“That number may or may not be precisely accurate, but it was obvious these guys had caught a bunch of fish and were pretty pleased about it,” he said, “and lots of times we tend to get more feedback about bad fishing rather than good.

“One of our employees here was out fishing about that same time, and caught a limit in under an hour,” Rister continued.

“Our creel survey last year was also very positive, so if the weather cooperates, I believe this year could be very good; and with the strong year- classes coming in, the following spring should also be pretty hot,” the biologist said.

Kentucky and Barkley have a lot of embayments and feeder creeks to take advantage of when bass are in the spring mode of shallow water and active feeding. Rister reports that the tremendous volume of threadfin and gizzard shad in these waters is contributing to excellent growth and weights for bass.

The “sister” reservoirs have been a productive environment for largemouths for years, and are hard to beat as a solid bet to catch bass at any given time. It appears this year may be an upward spike for better fish, and well worth a trip to the west.

The Kentucky Lake smallmouth population, meanwhile, is doing quite well, too, Rister said. He noted sampling for the big smallmouths is tough because electroshocking equipment used by biologists to stun fish so they can be netted and examined is less effective on species that generally stay in deeper water. However, tournament anglers consistently report boating some excellent smallmouths, and Rister said reproduction of bronzebacks has remained solid in recent years.

“We’ve got a good number of big smallies in the population, and anglers are picking these fish up regularly,” the biologist said.

“I see no indication that’s going to change this year, and I think anglers specifically interested in smallmouths can safely come here and find some quality opportunity along the deeper banks and structure.”

CAVE RUN

Black bass biologist Jeff Ross advises another good choice for spring largemouths in his book will be Cave Run Lake in northeastern Kentucky. Cave Run is a beautiful, scenic, 8,300-acre hole of water that holds a world-class muskie fishery, and a significantly improving bucketmouth fishery.