"What I like about Little Eagle is the varied fishing structure," Alford said. "You can fish timber -- and I mean you can fish timber every day for a week and not have to fish the same piece twice. That was always good, but in the past 10 years the lake has developed other patterns related to vegetation.

"I remember one day about 10 years ago when we came up here and had the best day we ever had. And the best pattern was slow rolling a spinnerbait over the top of a submerged grassbed that topped off 2 feet deep in 6 feet of water. In the past five years it's been more of an emergent grass pattern -- like flipping the edges of the floating mats of hyacinth. I like to key on the mats that have gotten caught up on a log or a group of cypress. That gives the fish two forms of structure to utilize and seems to hold them."

Bee Lake, adjacent to U.S. Highway 49 East between Yazoo City and Little Eagle Lake, has also developed a pronounced vegetation pattern, heavy mats of hyacinth and other grasses having spread out densely in some areas.

"The good thing is that they form a filter system that helps keep the lake clean even after a heavy rain," Richards said. "You can look at the water along the bank and see it really stained, and then fish the inside of the grassline and be looking down into clear water just 20 yards away. I love to flip along the edge of the vegetation. You can cover a lot of water in a day and pick up some good bites."

For Richards a "good bite" comes from a big largemouth. "But at Bee," he resumed, "if you aren't getting bites that way, and if the lake is clear, my favorite pattern for numbers is to fish the standing and laying timber on the west bank in 3 to 6 feet of water with either a worm, spinnerbait or crankbait. You may not get a big fish -- and a big fish at Bee is anything over 5 pounds -- but you can get on a hot area and catch several in the 2- to 3-pound range."

At Wolf Lake, bass fisherman Wayne Bullock of Jackson treated me to one of my more memorable fishing trips of the past decade. It was in early May on a surprisingly cool morning -- we had to put on windbreakers or a sweatshirt -- just after the spawn.

"You can bring as many rods as you want, but there's only two things you'll need to have tied on," Bullock said. "Make sure you have at least a 1/2-ounce spinnerbait and a 1-ounce spinnerbait, and have a midrange and a deep crankbait.

"What the big sow bass do after the spawn at Wolf is move out to the old river-channel ledge. If you can find a spot where the shelf is pretty wide off a bank but drops suddenly off into about 10 or 12 feet, you will catch fish."

Bullock knew of several such places -- but we only needed to hit two of them. Mixing up a combination of slow-rolling the big spinnerbaits and running the midrange crankbaits off the deep drop paralleling the bank, we stayed busy, managing a dozen big fish of more than 4 pounds each in just a few hours.