Murray crawls these lures on or close to the bottom, especially in areas with salt cedars or other trees in the water. These thickets will hold entire schools of bass, Murray said. He will go in the back of a wash and look for the thickest patches of trees (a tree top can be sticking out of 35 feet of water in some of the coves), then start out slow-rolling a big white spinnerbait or hopping a jig-and-pig. If you catch one, you can be sure there are others in there.

When you're fishing these giant thickets you really have to pay attention to where you catch your fish. There will be what seems like miles of brush, and for some reason all the fish will be on one or two spots.

Murray likes big tandem willow-leaf blade spinnerbaits with a long ribbon-tail trailer. Use shad colors such as white with silver blades or white with silver and a trailing gold blade. A touch of light blue in the skirt can be attractive to Lake Pleasant bass.

Murray's lure choice is strictly a matter of cover. He chooses the bait that will best probe whatever cover he's faced with. Often the bite feels like someone cut your line. With a spinnerbait, it will feel like the blades have gone missing. If the vibration changes or something just feels different, set the hook.

If he feels like he has completely saturated a good area with a spinnerbait, Murray will go over it again with a jig-and-pig. He'll also use a jig-and-pig if the fish have been pressured.

Spoons
It would be totally remiss to talk about fishing deep at Lake Pleasant without discussing spoons. Almost every seasoned Pleasant angler has a spoon tied on at all times. If you see a cluster of boats out in the middle of open water in Coles Bay, you can bet they are all ripping spoons off the bottom.

Some of the favorites are the blue and silver Crippled Herring, Kastmasters and a good old Hopkins spoon. Use at least a 3/4-ouncer.

If you see bass on the graph, you can drop a spoon down to them. Just let it fall over the side and wait until it hits bottom. Reel the line up taut, then give it another crank or two to get it up off the bottom. Then just start ripping the spoon and letting it fall on a taut line. If you let it fall on slack line, you'll miss the bite.

Be prepared to catch white bass or stripers when you're fishing spoons. There are a lot of them in the lake.

SHALLOW TECHNIQUES
Jerkbaits
One of the absolute best shallow-water baits for pre-spawn bass at Lake Pleasant is a jerkbait. There are so many little coves and cuts at Pleasant that you couldn't possibly fish them all in a day, but a rip bait will let you cover quite a few of them.

Murray likes clown Rogues (red head and yellow back). Other high-production rip baits at Pleasant include Pointer 100s by Lucky Craft, Bomber Long A's and Sebile ACAST Minnows.

For some reason, that clown color really works with the Rogues, but in general, you can stick to natural shad colors, maybe with a touch of blue.