Another windy day on Randleman 4-17-14

Not only has this been the weirdest spring we've had in a while, weather-wise, my schedule has been nuts and I just haven't been able to get out near as much as I would like.

But yesterday opened up for me and I took it.

Here are the conditions

Water temps: 55-60. It stayed 59-60 most of the afternoon, though in the back of sunny, muddy pockets it got as high as 63.
Water clarity - quite murky, muddy in places, and the water level was up a little bit from the last time I went out about 3 weeks ago.
Winds: out of the NE. It was pretty strong most of the day until maybe about 2-3 and then it calmed down some
Not quite clear blue skies, just dusting of thin clouds here and there

That wind was a major issue for me. I don't know how it is in those nice bass boats, but that wind can really push my light aluminum boat around. By the end of the day my trolling motor battery was dead. That is the second trip in a row, I hope the battery isn't going bad.

I started off the day throwing a spinnerbait (no bites) and a jig/craw. I missed one on the jig. The wind was making boat control while pitching very difficult so I said the heck with that and started zinging a chrome red eye shad. That's when a 3 lb'er slammed it. It's belly was full but maybe it was eggs. It was hungry because that bait was engulfed pretty well. The fish hit it shallow <4 feet, near, but not in wood. After the wind blew the boat to the other side of that spot I cast back through it and I got a little dink. So I thought I had established a pattern. Shallow red eye shad? But Red eye shad + shallow water = Hang ups. So I kept hanging up on the junk on the bottom, and the wind made it very difficult for me to get over the spot to knock it loose. I lost that bait and wiped out my supply of standard rattletraps before i gave it up. I thought about cranking or C-rigging points but the wind was just too difficult.

Later on about lunch I picked my friend up at the dock and so we went elsewhere on the lake and tried to stay out of the wind. All the rest of the action was on plastics. I got small ones on a zoom baby brush hog. I even got a nice 1 lb crappie on the baby brush hog when bringing it back up to the boat, boy was I surprised to get that on a T-rig. My friend started wacking on them with a mag finesse worm. The bass were all relatively shallow, some of his were right on the bank. They were scattered. We saw some cruising shallow, so they have got to be thinking about getting their love on. I figure if we didn't have this week's cold snap that water temp would have been 65+ this week. So its only a matter of days.

I've attached a poor resolution photo of the 3 lb bass, all I had was my crappy cell phone.

Jay