Bass on Crooked normally have their first spawn of the year in February. This month is their pre-spawn staging period, where a lot of big deepwater largemouths start moving their way to the spawning shallows. The best staging areas aren’t hard to find.

“Crooked Lake is actually three distinctly different lakes in one,” Alley explained. “The southernmost lake, where the public ramp is on County Road 630A, is Little Crooked. It’s very shallow with darker water and lots of lily pads and hyacinths.

“You go through a canal from there to the Middle Lake that has depths to 20 feet, is quite clear, and the west shoreline is a vast shallow flat filled with lily pads, peppergrass, pencil reeds, coontail, and other native plants. Some of these flats are almost 400 yards wide and have a distinct outer maidencane edge in 8 to 10 feet of water and then shallowing out as you move inside to the shoreline.

“The North Lake -- we call it the College Lake -- is the deepest and has a very short shoreline flat that drops off quickly into 8 to 10 feet of water, with a distinct maidencane edge.

“During January and February, the Middle Lake is definitely the best,” he noted. “That’s where the big fish want to go to spawn, and the west shoreline has the best spawning cover of any of the lakes.”

Alley’s most productive tactics are simple: for most of the month, he’s going to stay on that outside maidencane edge in 8 to 10 feet of water. Slow-trolling shiners along the edge is a quick way to find fish, and he often places one right along the edge of the grass under a float, while freelining another on the deeper side.

Another effective tactic is tossing Texas-rigged plastic worms. Alley favors the larger Culprit curly-tail models in red shad or motor oil. In thinner sections of grass, spinnerbaits in a gold blade/white skirt combo produce. However, during the morning and evening hours, top water baits can be deadly!

“You can catch a lot of big bass in this area with a 1/2-ounce black buzzbait early or late in the day,” Alley suggested. “If they boil up but miss the bait, try a gold Spook-type lure.”

When Alley finds fish early, he doesn’t abandon them during the middle of the day. He just drops back off the edge to drops in 12 to 15 feet of water and freelines shiners, fishes Carolina-rigged worms, or slow-rolls large spinnerbaits down the dropoff.

Bass hold to this pattern until they actually move onto the flats to spawn. And if winter temperatures are not overly frigid, that can happen on this lake in the latter part of the month.

Alley has a plan for that as well. “When those bass move up onto the flats, they can fan out and be a bit tougher to find,” he said. “But the first type of cover that they stage on is the pencil reed patches in 4 to 5 feet or water. It’s the first hard cover on the inside. When I start finding less bass on the outer edges, that’s the first place I look.”