Even if you’ve been fishing for years, it never hurts to try a new approach, as Bruce Litton did on a warm spring evening.

I fished a pond in early May, on a warm evening in the upper 70s following prolonged cool weather. As I did, I recalled a mid-April fishing trip with Jorge Hildago earlier that spring. We had fished a reservoir during a 70-degree morning. I tried for northern pike; Jorge caught a couple of largemouths. It was the way he did it that caught my attention and led me to throw a Senko two weeks later.

He fished a Senko rigged Wacky style. There’s nothing special about that, except that I’d never seen it done so early in the season. By letting it sink unweighted to bottom, six or seven feet deep, then tempting the fish by a slow, fluttering retrieve and broken cadence of subtle twitches, he caught bass with a Senko, when I would have opted for an inline spinner.

On that May evening, I did the same as Jorge. Despite facing a calm surface at sundown, I refused to throw a top-water plug. I wanted a big bass, and I felt as if no big bass was going to bust the surface. The water had warmed all day, but it was still a little on the chilly side.

Familiar with the corner I approached, having lost big bass there in the past, I knew it was distinctly possible to hook another. I would fish the Senko three to 10 feet deep by casting it up against the opposite bank and working it down into the corner’s pocket. Then up the slope to me.

The more fishing you do, the better you get at judging what might work, and what won’t, almost as if by sense of smell. It really amounts to being exposed to different approaches. On my first cast with a brown 5-inch Senko, I felt slowly fluttering it back was just right, and I hooked and lost a bass that felt like it could weigh five pounds. Unable to rouse another, I walked the shoreline over to a classic northeast corner.

Very early after ice-out, a northeast corner tends to produce best during a sunny, mild afternoon or evening. As the sun moves south and west, it warms that pocket. In May, it might not matter as much, but why not give a spot like that a try? The sun had set minutes before, and soon I was into a bass pushing three pounds, caught and quickly released. Minutes later, I caught another bass of about two pounds.

As this corner proved again for me, bass are not always as shallow on a warm spring evening as might be expected. Largemouths will usually orient themselves to the green stuff, so look for residual or emerging vegetation where you can find it. Bass are colored that way because they’ve evolved with aquatic vegetation on their side. But where there are bass but no weeds, if there’s mud, it might absorb some heat.

A pond, as opposed to a reservoir or lake, may imply two sets of standards about what is shallow and what is deep. For a pond, 10 feet is usually considered deep, but 10 feet is not usually considered deep in lakes and reservoirs. Many of us find ourselves fishing shallower in ponds than we might on big water. But then, we might miss out on the biggest bass, even when the shallowest water is significantly warmer during the early season than where the weeds thin.

My stint at the pond didn’t’ yield a terrific catch by any standards, but the bass I lost in the first corner certainly makes me want to try again. Bass will feed during early-season heat waves, but it might be a good idea to forgo flash or sputter, if the morning or evening is calm.

Even a seasoned fisherman can learn a new technique. You’ll find plenty of suggestions in the spring issues of MidWest Outdoors, available the first full week of each month at the newsstand or by subscribing on our website.