By Andrew Ragas The wind plays a role in determining the outcome of all outdoor sports, including fishing. For smallmouth bass anglers in particular, a wind capable of warming water temperatures plays a significant role in determining early spring fish locations and feeding habits. A beneficial wind and its corresponding warming water temperatures drive feeding patterns in early spring and wake smallmouths up from their dormant winter state. Anglers who fail to understand wind patterns, and lack a sense of spring smallmouth lake locations, learn to embrace the skunk. Meanwhile those who follow the wind and have learned to use it to their advantage will experience the hot early season bite. In early season, usually as early as mid-May, once water temperatures crest above 48-49 degrees, my best and most productive smallmouth bites of the year take place on big water. On my inland lakes of Wisconsin, these waters range in size between 1,000 and 5,000 acres and possess a border-line cold water fishery that is home to pelagic ciscoes and few trout. Most bass anglers make errors, believing these waters take forever to warm, thus entirely avoiding them until bass are in the sha