Where to fish for Bee Lake bass

Terry Bates said Bee Lake might be a small waterway, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of options.

“Bee Lake fishes a lot bigger than it looks on a map, and there’s a world of stuff to fish here,” Bates explained. “Grass beds are great for early morning fishing with frogs, topwater prop baits and buzz baits.

“Once the sun gets up high in the hot summer, the grass patches are perfect for flipping. You can catch awesome strings of bass by flipping the grass and hitting the isolated patches, particularly.”

Then there are the ample cypress trees to work.

“Bee Lake is an oxbow lake and has thousands of cypress trees, and that’s where most of the bass live,” Bates said. “Not all of them have bass on them, but there are areas that hold bass most of the time, and you have to locate those areas.

“While they all look similar, subtle differences may mean the difference between one area holding bass and others having none, so you need to pay attention to your surroundings when you catch a bass. It takes two fish to make a pattern, and once you find a pattern that’s the key.

“I look for the presence of baitfish every place I fish. If an area has shad or bait skittering on the surface or bass striking on top, you can be sure there are baitfish and bass there.

“If the wind blows all day or in one direction for multiple days, fish the downwind side of the lake, as there may be a shad pattern there. If the shad are blown to one area, the bass are sure to find them.”

While numbers of fish come off the trees, Bates said he’s always on the lookout for spots more likely to hold big bass.

“Probably my favorite place to catch lunker bass in the 4- to 6-pound range is on laydowns,” he said. “Anytime you’re running on a lake and see an area with a good many laydowns, that’s a good place to start when fishing oxbows.

“Fish that area first, concentrating on the laydowns, surface floating logs and even floating logjams. It’s a good bet that there will be lunker bass in or near a laydown log.

“Getting them to bite is the easy part.”