Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Mike Barnes pushed the little flat-bottomed aluminum boat off the bank, and I cranked the outboard.

"Let's head over to that flat just off the creek channel," he said. "That's where a lot of bass were up shallow and spawning a couple of weeks ago. I'm willing to bet they haven't moved too far."

Our game plan was to fish for post-spawn largemouths. It was the middle of April, and on this particular lake, largemouth bass had pretty much finished the spawn. We figured that they had moved out to structure just off the shallow flats.

I motored over to the flat, where we started casting lures that are drop-dead perfect for covering a lot of water and finding bass that tend to be scattered over a large area of water: spinnerbaits

The lake was just a little off-color from a recent rain. I tied on a spinnerbait with a chartreuse skirt and double Colorado blades. One was an orange-colored No. 4; the other was a white No. 5. My thinking was that I needed a big bait that would be easily visible in the stained water of the big public reservoir. Those particular blades put off a lot of vibration -- more bang for the buck. The combination of a chartreuse skirt and twin blades with differing colors would be hugely attractive to post-spawn bass holding on timber, brush or aquatic vegetation.

I dug around in my spinnerbait box and found a chartreuse twirl-tail grub. I skewered it onto the spinnerbait hook and was good to go. Barnes, one of the top bass fishermen on the lake, opted for a Stanley Vibra-Shaft with twin willow-leaf blades. The skirt was white; the blades were silver and brass.

"I've always been an advocate of matching the hatch, so to speak," said Barnes, who's also one of the best on the lake at finding post-spawn bass. "There's a submerged weedline just off the edge of this flat. That's where I've caught post-spawn bass on spinnerbaits about this time of year."

Matching the hatch was the ticket along that weedline. Within a few hours of fishing, Barnes had caught seven bass to 4 1/2 pounds. Although I had only caught three, my heaviest was a whopper pushing 7 pounds; at the peak of the spawn she probably would have weighed close to 8 1/2 pounds. She hit my big ol' bulky spinnerbait as I slow-rolled it along a line of brush in 4 feet of water.

There are all sorts of ways to catch bass on spinnerbaits. The safety-pin type of design in this particular lure has been a killer over the past few decades. It's a lure that can resemble anything from a perch to a shad. It can be rigged with big multiple blades for ultimate vibration, the skirts can be of one, two or three colors, and anything from a split-tailed chunk of pork to a plastic-tailed grub might serve for trailers. Indeed, a spinnerbait is one of the most versatile artificial lures that you can have in a tackle box.

"The spinnerbait is a lure that can be used on lakes, rivers and even streams to catch bass anywhere on Earth," said Lonnie Stanley, owner of Stanley Jigs, creator of the very popular Wedge and Vibra-Shaft spinnerbaits and five-time Bass Master Classic qualifier. "The blades on the Wedge spinnerbaits are the perfect combination of performance. The Wedge blade is tapered from .15 inch at the swivel, to .030 inch on the back end of the blade. The unique design in weight transfer and wedge shape coming through the water creates more vibration and flash than any other spinnerbait I've used.