“If you’ve got high water, you don’t have to worry as much about it being shallow up there,” Brown said. “The way you fish will be totally controlled by the water level. If you have a lot of runoff coming into the lake from the spring rains, then the water level will be high, and fish will back up in the bushes and stay there until they come out. You go in there with a floating worm or a spinnerbait. They’ll be in the backs of pockets, all over the bank, all up there in what I call that ‘nasty’ area where if you’re out of the channel, you’re in a stumpfield.

“From Ledge (creek) up to the I-85 bridge, you’re fishing shallow, visible cover. What’s the color of the water? If it’s stained, you may want to go with a little different kind of spinnerbait -- instead of two willow-leaf blades, you may go to a bait with a single Colorado blade that puts off a lot more vibration so those fish can feel it in that dirty water. And you’ll want to fish a big trailer on your spinnerbait. I use a Culprit double-tail, but I break off about 3 inches of it and thread it on the hook. I like to use a white trailer on a white spinnerbait.”

Falls tends to stay a little on the stained side most of the year, so it can be a tough place to sight-fish for spawning bass -- shoot, it can be a tough place to even see fish to determine if they’re spawning.

Brown figures that he’s got at least one great indicator -- the lake’s carp population.

“If the water level is up, there are plenty of bushes in the water to fish,” he said. “What you’re looking for when you’re looking for spawning bass is carp. What happens at Falls Lake is, when you find carp thrashing around in the shallows, spawning, throwing their eggs up on the bank, the bass will come in right behind them to spawn,” he said.

“Between Ledge and I-85, on the (Granville) county side, there are a lot of little islands along the bank with grass all around them, and the carp will get on them to spawn -- and the bass will be right behind them.

“I think the carp have disturbed the bottom, softened it up by thrashing around, and the bass can come in, wallow out a bed a lot easier and go to it.

“That’s when something like a Fluke or a trick worm will really work.”

Soft-plastic baits that at least “semi-float” like a Fluke or trick worm have long been excellent baits for spawning fish. Twitched slowly on light line with a spinning rod, the darting, sinking motion many fishermen use is a sure ticket for a strike from a bass that’s guarding its nest from predators.

If Brown isn’t interested in catching spawning fish -- especially later in the month -- he heads to the lower end of the lake, where bass have typically recovered from the spawn and are beginning to feed up again.