Early take

Rain's creeping up from the southwest. Calm before the storm and that should clearly make these fish—largemouth and smallmouth—turn on. That's happening now and there's a scramble to load the box before the weather changes along with the strategies. Here's a quick rundown of what we've seen thus far. 

 

Lots of frogging. No surprise. Most anglers are focusing on grassbeds tapering into points. 

Dropshotting. No surprise, either. We're seeing a lot of offshore fishing going on across the shoals and reefs.

 

The big question is when will dropshot anglers switch to a shallow strategy? And when will the frog people put them away and go deep? That will be an interesting question to ask at weigh in. Some may stay deep or shallow all day, as it goes with tournament strategies. 

 

As always, there's the spinnerbait crowd is running shallow grasslines. We know what that means. Running and gunning. 

 

But most of what we're seeing thus far is either deep (dropshot) or shallow (frog).