That said, you should know that stories like this one are never tough to write -- but they can come back to haunt you.

Like many other state natural resource agencies around the country, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks makes plenty of data available for use in forecasting the prospects for the 2005 bass-fishing season. And in general terms, the information is accurate and very useful.

But Mother Nature often has a way of throwing the proverbial monkey wrench into things when you least expect it. I learned that firsthand shortly after moving to Kansas in the early 1980s.

The outdoor editor of a major Midwestern newspaper published an article one Friday morning heralding the current fishing at a Sunflower State impoundment, including photos of the large fish that were boated there just a few days before the article appeared.

His work was enough to convince me and a couple of friends that we needed to be there as soon as possible, so we headed out at first light the next morning. We weren't alone in our assessment: Dozens of boats were already on the lake when we got there, and by the time we'd launched and cleared the boat ramp, several more anglers were waiting for their turn to slide their boats off the trailers and get in on some of the great action.

Of course, a vicious front was ripping through the area; high winds had turned the lake into a cauldron of churning whitecaps, and it was all we could do to maneuver around in my small aluminum modified-V bass boat. We never caught fish that morning, but we did catch more than a few glimpses of anglers bemoaning having let a certain newspaper writer coax them out to an awful place on a dreadful morning.

In the end, it's likely that reality was somewhere in the middle. The fishing probably wasn't always as good as the reporter had found it, and it definitely wasn't invariably as horrid as we'd found it that day.

Keep that in mind as you read what follows. The object is that of providing solid information about Kansas' best bass fisheries as the new angling season unfolds. The numbers are all we have to go by just now, but there's so much else that can affect your chances on a given outing.

Most notable -- and especially as it applies to reservoirs and lakes in the western half of the state -- is the potential for low water levels. Over the past 15 years, impoundments of all sizes in this part of the state have suffered drought, but were reborn when the rains returned. And now, another dry spell is influencing them, in some cases significantly.

It's not the kind of news anyone likes to report, but you have to be aware of it as you make plans for your bass fishing this season. Fortunately, lakes in the eastern half of Kansas should continue to provide some good bassin' prospects, so all won't be lost. The hope here, however, is that rains will return to the west because those lakes became "bass factories" about a decade ago, following the last severe drought.

Fortunately, one of the major western impoundments is no longer as vulnerable to drought as it once was. Back in the early 1990s, the state purchased the water rights to Cedar Bluff Reservoir, which removed it from the list of big western lakes whose water is used for irrigation. When other reservoirs in the region are down 20 feet or more owing to a combination of a lack of rain and the claims of irrigation, Cedar Bluff remains only a half-dozen feet or so below normal pool.