The stories of friends or neighbors around our backyard grills on a typical Memorial Day holiday weekend in May sometimes include the tales of catching big bass on one of the state's premier largemouth waters like Kentucky, Barkley and Dale Hollow lakes.

These highly touted, large reservoirs have produced many a trophy- class largemouth and have become spots bass anglers routinely think about immediately when reeling off places where the potential of 5-pound-plus bass seems best in the Bluegrass State. And it's rightly so. These are superb bass waters.

Here's a little secret, though: Not all big bass live in these expansive waters. Kentucky has a few other waterways that also produce hefty largemouth, and it's a combination of factors that causes that to be the case. Even in lakes that tend to get a good deal of fishing pressure, that doesn't preclude these particular waters from having the correct conditions to produce larger bass.

Certainly in spring, the potential of boating bigger female bass is greater just because it's the time of year when increased feeding and the biological urge to spawn tends to put more bass in reach of the average shoreline fishing approach. The month of May gives us all those advantages.

There are many schools of thought about behavior of big bass and the best ways to catch them. Most anglers will find that the methods they employ on one reservoir to pick up better fish in the spring will also work elsewhere. After all, especially in the spring, largemouth at least are a little more predictable in where they will spend time and why. This is part of the biological advantage that the spawning period provides.

ROUGH RIVER LAKE
Let's take Rough River Lake, for example, where biologists note there are good numbers of higher quality largemouth present in the population. Rough River is a relatively narrow, sprawling reservoir than fans out with many finger creeks and embayments covering a little over 5,000 surface acres at summer pool.

When water temperatures start to climb into the low 60s and stay there pretty consistently, largemouths are going to start rolling up out of the security of creek channels for two reasons. One, they should already be in a much higher feeding mode than in previous weeks, and more active, plus they will be seeking out spots along the banks or on points to nest.

Baitfish like shad and panfish such as bluegills will already be frequenting cover on rocky banks. They will also be starting to feed more heavily. Since big bass tend to prefer slightly deeper water and sometimes thicker cover, one feature to try to find is where the steeper channel drops are that wind close to a bank or point.

If bass want to feed, they will move up the ledges until they find food around brushpiles, stumps, and logs beneath the surface and whatever else is available. Sometimes big bass move into surprisingly shallow water, which is not uncommon on Rough River where a lot of deep bays aren't present as in other major reservoirs in Kentucky.

The drive to spawn and come into shallow water works the same on smaller bass as larger bass, except that oftentimes, bigger bass are found in those spawning spots that have deep-water access close by. They may run right up into 2 feet of water to feed, and eventually to nest, but won't venture too far from the safety of a good dropoff or steeper point.