We know there are fish on the beds in Bull Shoals, but evidently not many are fishing for them.
The sun has popped out so that likelihood could grow. But if you will see some of Mark Hicks' reports you will see that the wind is blowing a lot of these guys around. That type wind makes it hard to see beds, especially here.
While some beds are shallow, we've heard more reports of guys seeing big smallmouth in 20-feet plus. That's a hard fish to see with any kind of ripple on the water. Chances are a lot of these guys are still catching some of those deeper bedding fish, they just aren't looking at them, instead casting and hoping for an aggressive bite from an overly-protective fish of its bed.
Interesting enough, a lot of this lake is mixed really well with largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. Boyd Duckett told me he had kind a spot the size of kitchen table that had three beds in it and they each were occupied with a fish representing those species.
I've fished events on Bull Shoals at this time of year in the past as well. I've not fallen for this since I'm not much of a sight fisherman, but I know of several instances, especially in the ultra clear water when they are deep, when an angler has made several casts to a deep fish and instead of pulling in a keeper bass, he's reeled in a 2- or 3-pound crappie. We are hoping that takes place a lot today, and everyone will bring those to the dot com crew.