Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Ever had one of those days when you just couldn't wait to get on the water, when the bass were eating your spinnerbait all the way back to the trolling motor, when they sucked down every plastic worm or lizard you presented them, or when every crankbait they hit was swallowed so deep that you could barely see the bill?

Of course, for many anglers those days don't come as often as the days where they just anticipate having one of those days, only to miss that early bite because they were lined up for 90 minutes at the boat ramp, waiting their turn in line. Or those days when their wives gave them the cold shoulder because they missed dinner that afternoon, waiting another 90 minutes to get the boat out of the water.

Welcome to the land of fishing pressure. When you pull up to fish a point and there's already a bass boat there. And when it happens two or three times in the same morning. Or when you round the corner, heading back into a favorite pocket and there's already somebody in there. Or when you headed back into a creek to fish a stretch of productive boat docks only to find another boat halfway through that series of docks, with both guys in that boat smiling broadly.

If that happens to you too often, maybe it's time to look for less-crowded territory.

The first thing to do is to think small. The bigger, big-name lakes always draw more fishermen. Second, look for a lake that's off the beaten path, another country mile or two from the big city so the mob isn't as likely to show up there every Saturday.

The following are some suggestions for lakes that fit the bill.

LAKE MAYO
Guide Kennon Brown of Roxboro has, almost at his back door, Lake Mayo, an impoundment on the Mayo River that doesn't see the raw number of fisherman that nearby Buggs Island Lake gets.

"It gets some traffic, but nothing like the others," Brown said (919-358-3207). "You're not gonna have to wait to put your boat in or take it out. It's fished, just not very heavily."

Mayo is a 2,800-acre lake in Person County near Roxboro. Brown said that it is an extremely clear lake and is filled with hydrilla, the aquatic grass that is known to grow bass.

"It's a good lake, good in the fall," Brown said. "It's got numbers and big fish. Most of the fish you catch, as far as quality fish, will be anywhere from 2 to 2 1/2 and 4 pounds, but there will be some line stretchers that will go 8 to 10. Those are spring fish, but you'll occasionally catch one in the fall. In the fall, you get a lot of the other sized fish, especially schooling."

Brown said that finding fish is as easy as finding the deep edge of the hydrilla beds. He said that the grass is fairly thick in the shallows, all the way out to the channel drops.

"There will be some schoolers that come up in the main channel when they can push the shad up," he said.

Normally, however, Brown starts with a topwater early in the morning, working the edge of the grass or waiting for schooling fish to blow up on shad. He likes three different baits: a Pop-R, Baby Chug Bug and Sammy 85.

"You've got a lot of inch-long threadfins -- young-of-the-year -- and you want to match the size of the forage. The Sammy is a little bigger, and it will draw a lot of attention," he said.

"What you want to do is go down the edge of the grass where it comes out to the channel and parallel it. It won't be all the way to the top, but you can see it beneath the surface. There will be a little bit of water over top of it.