March to Buggs Island for great spring bass fishing along North Carolina-Virginia border

Guide Bud Haynes said the bite gets started at Eastland Creek, moves down to Nutbush Creek, then goes west to Clarksville, Va.

For extra-large Grade A bass fishing, set your compass for the big lake that straddles North Carolina and Virginia.

It’s hard, Bud Haynes and James Marshall admit, to look at the temperature gauge on your bass boat, see the number 48 and fish the banks.But at Kerr Lake, where the two veteran fishermen call their home lake, not going shallow could cost anglers some of the best fishing of the year. Late February and early March, Haynes and Marshall said, is prime time to catch a lot of bass — and a lot of big bass.

Think five-fish limits weighing 25 pounds — from 2 feet of water.

If that’s not enough to cause anyone to abandon those Carolina rigs and deep points and move into skinny water, then you aren’t on the same page with fat green fish that are as wide as boat paddles and as hungry as a bear that’s just come out of hibernation.

Haynes, a Clarksville, Va., native who operates Bud’s Guide Service, also manufactures a lot of neat, soft-plastic baits and spends his summers in a canoe at the extreme upper end of the James River trying to teach fishermen how to fool smallmouth bass. But when it comes to a homefield advantage, it’s his, and it’s Kerr Lake (Buggs Island to Virginians).

Marshall is a native of Kernersville, who owns a tackle shop, manufacturers a line of crankbaits (On The Line Baits) and promotes a successful bass tournament trail at Kerr, where he spent much of the 1990s working as a fishing guide.

You’d be hard pressed to find two fishermen who have a better grip on what goes on at Kerr as the bass season gets underway.

“The fish really get started here in late February,” said Haynes. “The (bite) gets started first from Eastland Creek down to Nutbush Creek, then it works its way up (to Clarksville).

“There’ll be about a week or two difference between the lower end of the lake and here around Clarksville as far as things getting started, because the (Roanoke) river flows up here pretty good, and the water stays cooler a little longer.”

But cool and downright cold are two different things. Most fishermen would consider 45- to 48-degree water as cold — maybe too cold for bass to be biting. That’s where they make their mistake — that and fishing too deep.

Because, Haynes and Marshall agreed, it doesn’t take much for big female bass to start looking toward the shallows, maybe a jump of a degree or two in temperature. A couple of warm days, a southerly wind blowing water in on northwest banks and, like a switch being flipped, those 4-, 5- and 6-pound girls will start to think about heading to their boudoir — spawning pockets and coves — but not before spending weeks eating everything in sight to put on those extra-big bellies.

“Buggs island in March is great — especially early March — because those big females are just moving up, and they’re ready to eat,” said Marshall. “They’ve been out (deep) almost all winter, not doing a lot, and when they move up, they’re ready to bite anything that comes close to ’em.

“A lot of people, I think, are afraid to fish shallow when the water temperature is 45 to 48 degrees. A lot of people want to wait until it gets into the 50s. You find a lot of people fishing deep, and you can catch fish deep, but your better fish will come up shallow first.”

One bluebird day last March, with the air temperature in the mid-50s and the water temperature right at the 50-degree mark, Haynes showed his stuff, taking a visitor out for a half-day at Kerr Lake.

Putting in at Grassy Creek, he barely left sight of the ramp before a bass was in the boat. Three hours later, he and his guest had caught 14 bass, 12 of them keepers, anchored by two fish that Haynes caught in less than 3 feet of water, a 5-9 lunker and a second fat female bass that weighed within an ounce or two of 5 pounds.

Those kinds of days are normal and may not even be among the best one can expect.

Marshall remembers days when he whacked bass after big bass with a Rat-L-Trap in 45- degree water. Limits averaging close to 5 pounds aren’t uncommon, and early March is the time when big fish are in relatively restricted areas, giving fishermen a chance to catch even bigger weights.

The key is something that sounds almost like an oxymoron — fishing fast and slow at the same time.

But there’s an easy explanation. According to Marshall, you have to fish a lot of different places, running between a lot of different spots looking for the perfect equation that results in bass that have moved up. But at each place you stop, fish fairly slowly, using a slow retrieve with the shallow-running crankbaits that he and Haynes favor in early March.

“I know it sounds funny, but you have to fish fast and fish slow at the same time,” Marshall said. “You’ve got to cover a lot of ground, but you’ve got to work your bait slowly.”

Where are they looking?

Haynes said he normally starts at the lower end of the lake. He spends a week or so around Eastland Creek before moving back up toward Ivy Hill and Grassy Creek at mid-lake. Marshall agrees the area from John H. Kerr Dam up a few miles upriver is generally the best early in the season.

“I try to fish the end of the lake near the dam first, because it seems like the water warms up there earlier,” he said “I like to fish the Ivy Hill area, and I like to fish the backs of Rudd’s and Butcher’s creeks because it seems like the water warms up faster there than any place on the lake.

“Maybe it’s something about the way the sun shines on those northwest banks all day long, but you can catch ’em there and in the back of Panhandle (Creek) sometimes earlier than anywhere on the lake. There will be only a 2- or 3-degree difference in water temperature, but that will make a big difference.”

He looks for two things: south-facing bays that catch the majority of the day’s sunshine, and rocky secondary points inside those bays.

“I look for little rocky points inside bays, especially little round bays that catch the sun; I go to those north banks,” he said. “I’ve found over time that you can have warm water on the north and northeast banks, but if you get a lot of wind, it will blow that warm water to the opposite side, and the fish follow that warm water. I really look for rocky places on the bank because the rocks warm up first and hold water better.

“What I’ve found is that fish that move in are nosing up against the bank feeding. They might back out a little on a cold front, but cold fronts aren’t as severe in March. At times, a front will change things only for a few hours.

“One year, we found plenty of fish in Rudd’s Creek, and the last part of the last day before a tournament, a front came in. It snowed like crazy and you couldn’t catch ’em. But I had buddies who were fishing in Buffalo Creek, and the fish up there didn’t shut down. The front didn’t affect them, because the lake is so big; it’s 40 miles long.”

Marshall normally starts fishing halfway back in creeks. He fishes secondary points and will move inside pockets, looking for fish.

“I’m trying to key on rocks, because they warm up more than anything on the bank,” he said. “I’ll start down by the dam, but as the month goes along, I’ll move up the river. I go the other way from Nutbush (Creek) because I’m looking for more rocky banks, and there is more rocky structure as you move up the lake.

“And you aren’t looking for stained water in particular, but you don’t want real clear water, either.”

Haynes said the potential for catching big bass and lots of them is so great because fish pattern so well, and because they tend to move up in certain areas, almost in waves.

If you can find the kinds of spots where bass have moved up, pinpointing the kinds of pockets, the wind direction, water clarity — and, of course, rocky banks — you can duplicate your success by running to similar spots. It’s pattern fishing at its finest.

“The first part of March, you normally get ’em bunched up together; that’s when you can fish and run between certain kinds of spots and catch 30 or 40 a day,” he said. “The fish we see earlier on are usually the bigger fish. They’re more dominant. They come in and take control of an area and dominate that area.

“Most of the time, they’re pretty aggressive. When they first move up, that’s when there will be a lot of places you can go and catch 15 fish without moving your boat. There may be 20 fish up on a little point. It’s possible to pull up to a place like that and catch 20. That’s how you get quantities.

“You run from creek to creek, and instead of fishing a hundred yards of bank, you run right to a place that looks like the place you caught ’em in another creek, stop there and catch a couple, then move on.

“Normally, they’ll begin to spread out right at the end of March and the first of April, because they’re going to start hunting the places where they want to do their thing (spawn) — the ends of trees, stumps and pea gravel banks.”

Marshall agreed fish become more aggressive and hold at more typical prespawn areas as April approaches, but the chances of getting an extremely big catch diminish.

“The fishing will get better as March goes along,” he said. “The fish will move farther back (in creeks and pockets), and more fish will move in, but you don’t have quite as many big fish moving up at the same time, on the same spots.”

Oh, and one more little item. Tie on a lot of little crankbaits.

“Most of the time, when it first gets started, it’s a crankbait bite,” Haynes said. “If a little front comes through, they might move back out and then, you go to a jerkbait. And a spinnerbait can be a little better than a crankbait after a front, because you can crawl it along the bottom a little slower. And wind can make a big difference. If you get wind on a little point, you need to pick up a spinnerbait.”

Haynes’ favorite crankbaits baits are a Bomber Speed Shad, a Shad Rap (No. 7 or 9), a Rat-L-Trap or a Speed Trap. He likes shad or crawfish colors most of the time, but he’ll throw brighter chartreuses when the water is stained.

Marshall is also partial to a Shad Rap and a Speed Shad, but the Diving Little T he manufactures is probably his favorite. Like Haynes, he normally reaches for crawfish or shad colors.

“I try to fish no deeper than 6 or 7 feet, but mostly, the fish are shallower than that,” he said. “You’re getting those big fish that are coming right up on the bank.”

In 2005, March was an especially good month, Haynes said, in part because the winter was so mild — like this winter.

“We had a super January,” he said. “The weather allowed fish to stay more active — it seems like we have a winter like that about every six or seven years or so.”

About Dan Kibler 887 Articles
Dan Kibler is the former managing editor of Carolina Sportsman Magazine. If every fish were a redfish and every big-game animal a wild turkey, he wouldn’t ever complain. His writing and photography skills have earned him numerous awards throughout his career.

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