Nothing worse in spring pre-spawn fishing than the sights of conditioned smallmouths. No matter what you throw, they won’t budge. How else can you tell smallmouths have been negatively conditioned by fishing pressure when they’re being lookers instead of hookers? This is happening more now. At every lake. You know when the fishery is conditioned when spots that were automatic in the past are occupied with smallmouths who could care less to bite. One day last May, guide customer Jason Norris and I pulled up to a few longtime favorite sand bars that collect smallmouths when the sun is shining high and beating down on the warm heat conductor. We beat the mid lake sand bars to death with X-Rap 08’s, hair jigs, 4-inch Diezel MinnowZ, and soft jerk minnows. Fish were home, we saw packs of them with our own eyes too, but they wanted none of them. Stubbornly, we stayed atop those spots for far too long just to coax a reluctant biter from each. To Jason, it was worth the wait as he caught a pair of 18’s and 19’s. To me, it was utter disappointment because if the lake was anything like it was during the mid-2000’s, we would have caught several dozen smallmouth