"You need to do a lot of pitching and flipping, and it's hard to beat a lizard," he said. "They'll hit a lizard year 'round, and it's great around the spawn. Depending on the color of the water, you can fish black, purple, watermelon or green pumpkin. When in doubt, pull out green pumpkin.

"I'll flip or pitch every little stick-up, dock post, duck blind, cypress tree and bulkhead. A lot of people will pass up bulkheads, but they can really hold fish. If I'm in a canal or on a bank that looks really good, I may make a couple or three flips or pitches to every piece of cover I think might hold a fish, but nothing out of control -- I'm not going to make a dozen pitches to anything."

If you make enough flips and pitches to good pieces of cover in spawning areas that meet Morris' description of "dead-end water," you're bound to run into plenty of bass. Unlike the bigger, heavier chunks found in reservoirs, river bass are likely to be a little slimmer but just as mean from fighting the current most of their lives. River fishermen, especially those in tidal areas, understand that a five-fish limit of 3-pounders is unusual, to say the least. A bigger limit is cause for celebration.

Morris has a couple of tricks up his sleeve in case the dead-end water bite is dead. He'll fish points on the outside edges of backwaters, because they're commonly staging areas for fish moving in and out. Current isn't as big a no-no in those areas, because fish are not likely to actively spawn there. But they'll stage there and feed, especially on the side of the point that's out of the current. In those situations, Morris will use a small crankbait, a spinnerbait or a Chatterbait.

And he'll pay special attention to lily pad fields or grass flats.

"They will spawn in a pad field," he said. "They'll spawn around the stems of the pads. By May, the pads will be up, so you have to pay attention to places like that and fish them. You need to fish the pads that are not totally out of the water on low tide, because the bass will leave those when the water gets too low.

"A lot of times, you can't get your boat back there in the pads to flip or pitch, but you can catch 'em making long casts with a buzzbait or a frog."

As the end of May approaches, Rick Morris will look at a lot of the same areas, but different parts of those areas, because he said spawning fish and hungry post-spawn females share different parts of the same general area. You just use different baits.

"By Memorial Day, I'm going to absolutely be looking for topwater fish -- buzzbait or spinnerbait fish," he said. "No. 1, you'll have fish that are spawning, and you'll have fish guarding the fry, looking up toward the surface. And the big females that have left the beds will want to eat. They leave, come out on the end of the flat and go to feeding aggressively. You can catch 'em on a spinnerbait, a Chatterbait, a buzzbait or a small crankbait.