“Once you get away from La Cygne and Coffee County, the good February bass fishing is a little tougher call to make,” Austin said. “It definitely depends a lot on the weather.

“In the northern part of the state, it’s not terribly uncommon to find lakes that still have ice in February. During my time working in the region, I’d say we’d have ice in February one or two out of five years. If you’re going to be driving any distance to bass fish this month, it’ll be worth your while to call ahead and check on lake conditions.”

One thing you definitely can count on: The western reservoirs that had been Kansas bread-and-butter bass fisheries throughout the mid and late 1990s are still in the throes of draught. Unless there has been a truly significant rain episode or episodes since this story was written, western Kansas’ impoundments still are way low and not very good choices for a February outing.

“It just didn’t seem like we were living right when all the heavy rains moved through the state in the spring last year,” Austin said. “You could watch radar and see really heavy rains that would just miss this reservoir or that one. It was amazing, and disappointing.”

Austin said that, if anything, those tremendous downpours only helped the western lakes hold their own. “They might have gained a foot or two in level,” Austin said, “but they typically lose that much or maybe a little more just through evaporation during the summer. I guess the best you can say is that we didn’t have a significant net loss.”

That said, it remains the case that Cedar Bluff is still more than a dozen feet low, and other western impoundments like Glen Elder, Kirwin, Webster and Norton are 8 feet or more low. They didn’t get the kind of impact that lakes of all sizes endured throughout the eastern two-thirds of the state.

“The good thing about bass is they tend to just move vertically when water levels change dramatically,” Austin said. That is especially true while the levels are going way above normal and not dropping much below normal when the waters recede. That’s what happened on many reservoirs in 2007. “Other game fish species like walleyes or crappie will wash through reservoirs when waters get high,” Austin said. “Bass tend simply to move up and down in the areas they live as the water levels fluctuate. I don’t believe they endured serious troubles from the heavy rains we had last year.”

What that means is the lakes that were good for bass in 2007 are set to be good again this year. Among them you should include El Dorado reservoir, north of Wichita, and Big Hill. Hillsdale, on the fringes of the metro Kansas City area, also should be good again.

Bass aren’t generally going to be holding in the kind of thick, tangly cover that can fray lines and cause breaks at the worst of times -- as when you’ve hooked a 7-pounder.

Kansas bass anglers also have many other “smaller” options in the myriad of state fishing lakes and community impoundments around the Sunflower State.

Butler SFL, not far from Wichita and El Dorado, continues to be one of the better bass-fishing SFLs in the state. Brown, Clarke and Lyon state fishing lakes also should continue to offer good prospects for bass anglers in 2008.

The community impoundments have, over the past 25 or 30 years, been among the most overlooked bass fisheries in all of the Great Plains. There are some really good largemouths swimming around in some fairly small public waters, and they’re worth your time to check out. As evidence, I’ll note that the biggest bass I’ve ever hooked lived in Lake Olathe. She jumped and spit the plastic worm on me, so I never got to touch her. But she totally cleared the water in that jump, and I know that the big ol’ girl was in the 7- to 8-pound range.

She’s not alone in calling Kansas community lakes home. For some great action this season, you ought to be looking at places like Antelope Lake in Graham County; Gardner City Lake, not far from Kansas City; and Madison City Lake.

Reiterating, Austin surmised that more than a few community impoundments might give up true lunkers again this season. They include Lone Star Lake, near Lawrence; Eureka City Lake; and Pony Creek Lake, in Sabetha.