Also, some of the anglers who enjoy fishing shallow water will exclusively fish shallow water on the deep, lower end of the lake. However, they will work the areas where the river comes close to the shoreline, especially points that taper toward the river channel.

Both night and daytime fishing are productive on the lake, with the lower end of the lake perhaps producing better by night. However, you can enjoy plenty of excellent largemouth bass action throughout the lake by day or night.

At Lake Wateree, the recipe for success is not much different in terms of generic structures than found at Lake Greenwood. There are some anglers who have fished this lake for years who actually look forward to this time. The fish get into quite predictable patterns at reasonable water depths. Most of the time the largemouth bass can be caught with deep-diving crankbaits, especially those that dig down to the 12- to 16-foot depths.

Of course, there are many different lures that will work well at these depths. If you fish one or two of them well and have confidence in them, you shouldn't hurt your chances by using them.

When the lake is at normal pool level, there are a tremendous number of structures where fish will hold at this productive depth range. Even on the lower end of the lake, where there's some deep water in the 50-foot range, there are many places in open water where underwater humps rise near the surface. Plus, there are scads of points in the lower end of the lake that taper from the shallow water along the shoreline to very deep water.

Most of the bass fishermen prefer the area from the Lake Wateree State Park downlake to the dam when fishing the offshore structures. From this point and uplake, there's excellent fishing as well, but not as much drop and hump fishing. Some anglers will work the steeper, quickly dropping shorelines and the heavy cover found in some of the larger coves and creeks in the upper portion of the lake.

Let's take a closer look at both of these methods on Lake Wateree.

Fishing structures that drop from shallow to deep water is productive throughout the day. Sometimes it actually gets better after early morning when the fish seem to congregate back along these structures. The bass sometimes make a foray to the shallows early in the morning, but usually that shallow water is close to these areas.

It's not unusual to encounter some schooling fish action near the points and drops. Swimming minnow lures and spoons are excellent lures to cast into these surface-feeding events. However, crankbaits and the trusty Texas-rigged plastic worm fished in shallow water down to 8 feet deep can be very productive very early in the morning and again late in the evening. Once the sun begins to poke above the horizon, the fish do seem to retreat back to the 12- to 16-foot depth range and load up on the humps and ledges.

The trick here, according to most anglers, is finding the fish. Once you locate them on a specific day, you can catch several hefty fish in short order. Patience and perseverance are two keys to success when fishing isolated, offshore structures on Lake Wateree.