Undercover

Lake Tillery’s extensive shallow-water cover can make for some great late-spring bass fishing

When David Bryant heads to Lake Tillery for some late-spring bass fishing, he tries to make sure he tries to cover all his bases — because it’s a “cover” thing.

Tillery is a 5,000-acre impoundment on the Yadkin/Pee Dee system southeast of Albemarle and east of Norwood, and like most other lakes on the chain, it is loaded with cover such as docks, grassbeds, laydowns and rocks, and structure like creek ledges, dropoffs and long, tapering points.

Bryant, the receiving manager for Bass Pro Shops in Concord, has been fishing Tillery almost his entire life, joining a local bass club while still in high school.

“Spring fishing on Lake Tillery for me means staying below the (NC) 24/27 bridge,” said Bryant, who lives in Locust. “In May, the docks hold the bass. (Bass) use the docks to move into and out of the spawning areas for the cover.”

Jeff Hoener, a retired Special Forces sergeant from Sanford who has been fishing Tillery for the past eight years, loves the cover the lake offers, says it’s perhaps more important on Tillery than other Yadkin chain impoundments.

“Tillery has more diversity of cover than the other lakes. It has depth, shallow water, ledges, grass and docks, and for me, seems easier to pattern the bass,” said Hoener, who likes to start the day targeting the shoreline grass beds, especially those that are in clean water.

“The topwater bite picks up as they get more active. A Pop-R is more subtle if the bass are finicky; otherwise, I stick with a buzzbait,”

“In spring, the bass are predictable. In early May, (they) start moving to the grass edges to spawn. I think the bass would rather swim in the clean stuff than swimming in the gooey stuff. Grass growing too slow usually means it’s in sediment, and if I see that, I will look elsewhere to fish.”

Bryant pays more attention to docks, fishing them with a Shaky head worm, casting over the corners of the docks to get the bait closer to the cover. He also skips the bait to get the bait as close to any parts of the dock he can reach.

Around docks, Bryant finds bonus structure in the form of private boat ramps, and he likes these especially after the spawn.

“The bream hang out on these ramps, and most of them have a drop off at the end that bass use for ambush points,” Bryant said. “I like to match the bait to the water, and I like to use natural-colored baits. I like to use green pumpkin, watermelon seed and then for contrast, black.”

While Bryant relies heavily on a Shaky head at Tillery, he is also very confident with creature baits, flipping them into any wood cover he finds.

“Lake Tillery has really become a good creature bait lake,” Bryant says. “Beavers, brush hogs, craws … they have really been strong here lately.”

Bryant looks for any laydowns, brush and any other wood to flip with his creature baits, working them around the outer edges and then in the middle of the cover. If it is near the grass, it’s even better.

Bryant also likes to toss soft stickbaits, and his favorite is the Stik-O-Worm from Bass Pro. He rigs the worm Texas style and works it with a slow, twitching movement.

“You can’t work it too slow. When you think you are going slow enough, slow down more,” he cautions.

Bryant tossed the Stik-O-Worm at any cover he sees including the grass edges, docks, any wood in the water and to rocks. In the spring he targets the pockets in the lower end of the lake and hits as many of them as he can to find the active fish.

Hoener also likes stickbaits, preferring the Kinami and Strike King baits, but he rigs his wacky-style with a widegap Gamakatsu finesse hook, hand-tying a nylon weedguard on the hook to help it pull through the grass easier. He also likes to fish the stickbaits slow and on the edge of the grass.

“Fishing has a lot to do with confidence,” Hoener says. “I like to add CB’s Hawg Sauce to my baits for scent and then fish the baits slow and on slack line. I watch for the line to move. If there is no movement, I let it fall to the bottom and then move it a few times. If they haven’t picked it up by then, I reel in and toss it out again.”

When working the stick baits, Hoener likes to have at least six feet of depth of the edge of the grass. Hoener parallels the bait to the grass edges and also casts into the edge of the grass and yo-yos the bait with the line over the grass and pulling it up and down, giving it a more vertical presentation for the bass.

Hoener also likes to target debris that has been backed into pockets by the wind or current and the many docks on Tillery with a Shaky head worm.

Bryant and Hoener agree that bass use the docks as staging areas before moving into the grass or shallow, wooden cover to spawn. After the spawn, they’ll stop at the docks, the ramps near the docks and then out to the main-lake points on the way to deep water.

But deep is something to think about, but not necessarily fish. Bryant advises anglers to keep fishing shallow.

“Because the water on Tillery is murky, you usually don’t have to fish any deeper than three to six feet deep,” he said.

The water color determines how Hoener fishes the available cover.

“Let the water determine how close to the cover you fish,” he said. “If it’s murky, you need to make your casts closer to the cover.”