pulled up to the boat launch about 7 AM, beautiful day! First order of the day was to turn on the depth finder to see what the water temp. was as this is very important to bass fishing this time of year. It was 59 degrees, perfect for the prespawn fishing for smallies.

We were using spinners and crank baits, had some poles rigged with plastic worms and jigs but never had to pull them out of the rod holders all day, sometimes the bass are a little deeper and they come in handy.

Went to the first honey hole and caught 6 bass in the 2 lbs. range. The second hole, we hooked 12 more, some small but the biggest was still around 2 lbs. After 35 minutes of fishing we had caught 18 bass.

Went to some other holes around steamboat and found the water to be much cooler, around 55 degrees so we went farther south until the water warmed up again and then just drifted along the shoreline casting and by 11:20 had caught 100 smallmouth, some small, some nice size. We did keep a few of the bass for a very tasty fish fry that night...mmmmmmmmm!! mmmmmmmmm!!! mmmmmmmmmm!!

Most of the bass we caught ranged from 1 - 2 lbs with the biggest being 2.5 lbs. a little small, but they were all fun to catch. The bigger ones I think will definitely be coming up within the next one to two weeks, depending on the weather and amount of water being pumped into the lake from the Columbia.

Never saw so many boats on Banks lake before in all of the almost 30 years that we have been fishing it!! There was a walleye tourney going on but still were tons of other boaters out fishing, but, it was a very nice weekend.

Went back up towards steamboat and the fishing slowed down even though the water warmed up to over 67 degrees in some spots but could just get smaller fish, could have been because of the number of boats hitting the different shorelines.

The hot fishing is coming up very soon though, the next week or two will be great out there and we will be back to spend the memorial day weekend there! Want to leave the office now and head out!!!!......to bad I can't yet!!

---