“I had a guide show me this spot,” Penny said as we came off plane and started idling toward the back of a nondescript cove. “You have to know it’s here to find it.” Sure enough, in about 15 feet of water, the graph showed a small rockpile. Penny took a chunky bass off it with her first cast, and I did the same.

This month marks the time that sees Kansas farm ponds really start coming into their own as bass fisheries.

From that point on, I never failed to fish that spot during the post-spawn without at least getting a bite. These unknown/harder-to-find pieces of structure can be very productive this month.

Flooded timber can produce, too. Post-spawn bass will often suspend in and around timber now, and you can catch them a few different ways. We’ll talk about those techniques later on.

Don’t bypass docks, either. Post-spawn bass suspend under docks, and fishing them can be a lot of fun. I’ve developed a secondary game of sorts when fishing docks that involves trying to guess just where the fish is going to hit. Dock bass are liable to hit anywhere, so you’re going to have to be ready for a strike on every cast.

Puzzling over areas to fish gets simpler as you move to smaller lakes. Most Kansas state fishing lakes have a few main-lake points, maybe some manmade rock jetties, and some brushpiles placed to attract and hold fish. All could produce some bass for you now.

Another very productive tactic at the SFLs -- for me, at least -- has involved fishing up into feeder creeks as far as I can. They generally aren’t as large as those feeding reservoirs, and you’re not likely to be able to fish too far upstream before they grow too narrow and/or shallow for the boat. But until you reach that point, you’re going to find bass in shoreline structure and a little deeper relating to structure along the channel.

Some community lakes offer you the best of both worlds. You’ll find main-lake and secondary points, some smallish feeder creeks, and boat docks. You can actually spend more time thoroughly fishing waters like Gardner Lake than you can a big reservoir like La Cygne. And the different spots give you opportunities to try different baits and presentations.

Farm ponds, as alluded to earlier, are the easiest to figure out and fish. Just cover all the water. Fish the shoreline; move out deeper; make a pass along the dam. You’ll catch bass, and probably figure out in the process a pattern that’ll serve you well for the outing.

At first glance, you’d probably expect the same kind of fishing on one of the strip pits on the Mined Land Wildlife Area in southeast Kansas. That’s not necessarily the case. As you might guess from the term “pit,” most of these small impoundments resemble deep bowls that really don’t have leftover structure. Your efforts should focus on shoreline structure and any points that exist. Not all of these potholes are perfectly round and without shoreline “character.” Fish the shorelines thoroughly to catch bass.

What should you fish -- and how should you fish it? Options abound, even if the bass are a bit sluggish because of the inevitable post-spawn recovery.