According to Horton, you need to keep in mind that strikes on floating worms are generally less aggressive ones -- a bass comes up and quietly sucks the bait in, for instance. "I think it's a reaction strike," he remarked. "A floating worm doesn't really represent a baitfish or crawfish, but maybe a catalpa worm falling out of the trees, or something of that nature."

LIZARDS
Another popular plastic bait for this time of the year is one that BASS pro Edwin Evers puts near the top of his lure list: the versatile lizard, a bait that can elicit a smashing strike from a female on the spawning bed.

"It's a good bait to fish," said Evers, one of the hottest young anglers on the CITGO Bassmaster Pro Tour. "In terms of catching big bass, lizards and salamanders really prey on the eggs that big females lay, so the bigger fish are more apt to eat them. I do get a lot of bites from bigger fish in the spring on lizards."

How much bigger? Evers has caught lots of 8- and 9-pound bass on this type of lure, which he fishes primarily during stable weather conditions.

"With a lizard, I like to keep it on bottom," he offered. "I'll do that by popping it and scurrying it across the bottom, still looking for isolated cover. I usually like a Yum 6-inch lizard in green pumpkin or watermelon colors with a 1/8-ounce weight. I'll fish it Texas-rigged around cover that I can see using a 7-foot All-Star rod in medium-heavy action with a Pflueger President 6:3:1 reel spooled with 14- to 17-pound-test Silver Thread monofilament."

JERKBAITS AND FLUKES
Evers is also a big fan of fishing soft-plastic jerkbaits and fluke-style baits -- especially as the spawn winds down.

"These are huge in the post-spawn pattern," said the five-time CITGO Bassmaster Classic qualifier. "Bass are starting to feed up on shad again -- that, and bluegills. So those two baits can imitate those really well, plus bass are starting to school.

Evers noted that since these baits imitate shad really well, an angler can skip them up under boat docks and back into tight places. "It is a bait that covers the upper water column," he explained, "and I like to work it in heavy cover," Evers said. "When I fish one of these baits, I'll twitch it side to side. I'll do that two or three times, let it die and fall, then do it another two or three times, and let it die and fall again. They'll typically hit it in between twitches, or when you're letting it die."

When he fishes such a bait, Evers typically rigs up a Bass Pro Shops white or a baby-bass-colored model with a green back with a 4/0 offset round-bend hook; this the pro throws with a high-speed reel spooled with Bass Pro Shops XPS fluorocarbon line in the 12- to 14-pound-test range and mated with a 7-foot medium-action BPS Pro Qualifier rod.

"The high-speed reel is real important in fishing these baits," he explained, "so that you can reel in the slack in a hurry to set the hook."