Photo by Tim Lesmeister

A hundred miles apart, High Rock Lake and Falls of Neuse Lake are among North Carolina’s best reservoirs for catching largemouth bass.

And May is a month when, on either body of water, a fisherman with the right kind of know-how can get rich, fishing-wise, in a hurry.

The key is being able to determine at what stage is the spring spawn. On both lakes, there will be quite a few bass fanning beds and depositing their eggs before Memorial Day arrives. The peak of the spawn at High Rock is typically during May; at Falls, it’s closer to the end of April.

That’s enough to point fishermen in several different directions, looking for fish that are actively feeding.

On High Rock, David Wright of Lexington, one of North Carolina’s most successful bass fishermen, is hoping for certain things to happen, weather-wise, that will really turn on the bass. But he’s afraid that recent trends that have changed the way the lake fishes will continue.

Kennon Brown of Roxboro has guided on Falls of Neuse Lake for more than a decade, taking full advantage of the huge fish that the 12,800-acre reservoir occasionally spits out. He works the entire length of the lake -- from the northern outskirts of Raleigh near the dam to the headwaters of the Neuse, Flat and Eno rivers north of Durham.

“May is an awesome time to fish on Falls Lake,” Brown said (919/358-3207). “But it can be a time of big transition, too.

“You’ve got a lot of everything going on. You’ve got a lot of fish coming off from mid-lake to the lower end, and on the upper end, you’ll have a lot of fish that are spawning or just fishing to come off -- in a mood not to do much of anything.”

So, Brown has a handful of tricks up his sleeve, tactics that he expects to use throughout the month as conditions change and bass move through the spawn.

“What I’m gonna do is look in the upper end of the lake for fish that are either pre-spawn or spawning,” said Brown, who operates Hawg Hunter Guide Service. “I’m going to be anywhere from Ledge Creek up to the I-85 bridge, and I’m going to be looking for little isolated pieces of cover in only a foot or two of water -- a laydown that’s all by itself, a stickup no bigger than your thumb -- stuff that fish will relate to.”

The upper end of the lake, from the Cheek Road bridge upstream past I-85 and to the mouth of the three small rivers, is a navigational nightmare. There’s plenty of water in the narrow, winding Neuse River channel, but once you leave its perimeter, the lake consists of countless shallow, stump-studded flats extending from bank to bank. You can be comfortably riding along in the channel in 20 feet of water, make a wrong turn and find yourself in 18 inches of water on top of stumps.

But May is one of the easier -- make that less dangerous months -- to fish the upper end, Brown said, because typically, spring runoff will have filled the lake to the brim or above, leaving fishermen with several feet of water on top of those flats.