Savvy refuge bass anglers make every effort to get to the refuge lakes as soon as they can after the roads open. The bass are almost always near the banks right after the flood, and to say they're usually cooperative is to understate the case. Catch it right, and you'll find some of the best bass fishing of your life -- even if the lakes are much more accessible than they were a few decades ago.

BOATERS: THINK SMALL
Although you can launch it and fish from it on some of the larger, more accessible refuge lakes, that big Ranger or Triton you mortgaged your soul to buy won't serve you very well in most refuge waters. You'll be much better off if you bring a 14-foot or 12-foot aluminum johnboat, either on a lightweight trailer or in the back of your pickup. Even when there's a good gravel road leading to the shore of a lake, there's not always a concrete ramp available. Sometimes the only way to launch is to manhandle the boat across a mudflat to the water's edge. You won't do that with a bass boat.

Another option that opens up more possibilities: Bring an ATV with a trailer hitch. ATVs aren't allowed on the main gravel roads, but many secondary refuge roads are ATV trails only, and they lead to some fine fishing lakes that don't get as many visits as do the ones on the gravel.

Also, many of the refuge lakes can be reached from the river by using a larger boat to run the river and dragging a smaller johnboat through the woods to the lake. A set of bicycle wheels mounted on an axle is a handy accessory for rolling a small boat into the kind of secluded, high-caliber fishing lakes most of us dream about.

BEEF UP YOUR TACKLE
Realistically, you're not going to encounter bass as big as are occasionally caught in White Oak Lake or Lake Monticello in the White River lakes. The bottomland ecosystem is extremely fertile, and growth rates are fast, but the extreme habitat swings, from raging floods to summer droughts, make life expectancy short for White River lakes largemouths. They grow fast and die young. Most run 1 to 3 pounds, with a good number reaching 4 to 5 pounds. After that, bigger fish are usually scarce in these lakes.

That said, it's still not a good idea to use tackle that's too light. These riverbottom bass are heavily structure-oriented, and in the river bottoms, "structure" is pretty tough stuff -- cypress knees, ironwood buckbrush, relic cypress logs and treetops that have been in the water since the virgin timber was cut a century ago and will be there at least that much longer. Also, there are big grinnel, pickerel and longnose gar to consider. A 12-pound grinnel will give you plenty to think about.