With water temperatures pushing into the high 60s, largemouth bass are bedding all over the area - and they’ll never be easier to catch than they are right now.

Some people don’t like sight-fishing for bedding bass, but I’ve always enjoyed it. Maybe because it’s so easy.

You just cruise the shallows, looking for light spots on the dark lake bottom. Those are usually beds, and sometimes you can actually see the fish sitting on them.

In either situation, I like to start casting toward the bed with a four-inch Texas-rigged lizard. I use the smaller four-inch variety because it’s easier for the fish to get the whole bait in its mouth. I use bright colors like tomato or bubble gum, so I can see it more easily.

Unless you can actually see the fish hit the bait, you have to pay close attention or you’ll miss the strike. They’re usually not hitting the bait to eat it. They just want to pick it up and spit it out of their bed, so your window of opportunity for a hookset is sometimes small.

Just remember, when you’re retrieving a bait across the bottom, any variation in the path of your line is likely to be a bite. If you’re using those brightly colored baits I mentioned, you might just see the bait suddenly disappear. That often means a fish has inhaled it.

Sometimes when you find bedding bass, there will be two per bed - a small male and a larger female. You can often catch both fish if you’re willing to stick with them.

One thing that’s awfully important for a sight-fisherman is a good pair of polarized sunglasses. You can see much farther under the water with glasses than you can with your naked eyes.

When looking for spawning fish, try to key on fish that are willing to stand their ground.

If you come across a fish that spooks away from the bed and comes right back in just a few seconds, you can almost always catch that fish. If you come across a bass that spooks off the bed and stays gone more than a few seconds, you’re in for a bigger challenge.

The spawn won’t last very long, so get out and take advantage of a good situation while you can.

…While thanking Scott Hoch for missing a 2-footer that would have sent a Senior PGA Tour event into a playoff, thus delaying NBC’s coverage of playoff hockey for at least another half-hour.

– My main impression from watching the Jordan Brand Classic last night is that Tyreke Evans is better than I thought he was. Sure, it’s an All-Star game, and neither team was exactly playing much D out there. But Evans is going to be absolutely lethal playing in John Calipari’s offense. The only thing I don’t like about his game is that he plays a little bit too upright, but he’s a very hard man to guard. He’s not Derrick Rose, but he doesn’t have to be because college defenders will have to respect Evans’ ability to shoot the ball, especially with that fadeaway he can go to. Rose didn’t get that respect, especially early in the season. That will help Evans’ ability to drive the ball against college defenders. Evans and Brandon Jennings (headed to Arizona) are definitely the two best players in this class.

– This stuff about Evans being a “ballhog” is a bunch of bunk. It’s funny to me that when people evaluated Eric Gordon last season, they talked about his “relentless will to score.” When they evaluate Evans, he’s a “ballhog.” Give me a break.

– One of the big offseason topics has been the Memphis point guard situation. Will it be Antonio Anderson, Willie Kemp or Tyreke Evans? How about Wesley Witherspoon? If he indeed commits to Memphis, Witherspoon is without question a viable option to play point guard for the Tigers. I had previously been told that by various people close to the program, but I wasn’t necessarily a believer until seeing him last night. He definitely has the ball skills, and he appears to be able to defend that position even at 6-7 or 6-8.

– So apparently Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has been running around the state telling a variation this joke, transcribed from a recording on the Chattanooga Times Free Press Web site of his speech to the local Better Business Bureau: (According to a poster on MemphisTigers.org, he told the same joke yesterday in a different speech, modified because Chris Douglas-Roberts turned pro.)

“I don’t know if you have all seen it. did you see where Memphis’ kids are all going to come back and none of them are going to go hardship? I don’t know if you all saw that. Douglas-Roberts said he couldn’t take the pay cut if he came out, so he’s coming back next year. (Groans and laughter) I’ve got to do something to liven y’all up. I’m just kidding.”

– Amazing what people will say when they don’t know they’re being tape recorded, isn’t it? Pearl, of course, should know all about that (Wink, wink)

– Seriously, what a jokester Pearl is. It especially sounded funny coming from a guy who is about to sign Scotty Hopson. I’m just kidding, of course.

– Look, I know 95% of my media bretheren laps up Pearl’s clown act. I just can’t get with it. Making accusations thinly veiled as jokes isn’t funny, it’s asinine. Telling a public gathering that you’re going to “kick Memphis’ ass” isn’t refreshing, it’s undignified.

– But you know what? It works. Let’s just say one of John Calipari or Bill Self or even Mike Krzyzewski’s teams had risen to No. 1 on Feb. 25, then sputtered to the finish line and gotten drilled in a Sweet 16 game against a team that had been lower-ranked for basically the entire season. They’d have gotten roasted; I can tell you that much.

– I haven’t found one article criticizing Pearl for the way his team peaked in late February and never was quite the same. After beating Memphis, Tennessee basically abandoned every single principle it used to get the No. 1 ranking. Was that even a topic of conversation? Not to my knowledge, at least not in the national press and media outlets that cover UT — including the Tennessean, the Knoxville News-Sentinel and Chattanooga Times Free Press.

– I guess painting your chest buys you a lot of leeway. But if Pearl can’t get UT over that Sweet 16 hump in the next couple years, those jokes just might start to wear thin.

Based on the immediate response to the events of this week — culminating with Friday’s announcement that Chris Douglas-Roberts put his name in the NBA Draft — it is time for a Memphis fan reality check.

First of all, Chris Douglas-Roberts is not coming back. He’s gone. It’s final. Don’t let yourself believe he’s just “testing the waters.” Has he hired an agent and made it official? I poked around for awhile this afternoon, and I couldn’t get a straight answer. (The reason for that, I believe, is the nefarious nature of the Derrick Rose agent situation earlier this week. If you’re not going to address the agent situation or have a press conference for Rose, then you can’t for Douglas-Roberts. It wouldn’t look good.) But I did speak with CDR’s mother, and I asked her straight out whether this was a testing of the NBA waters or a final good-bye. She was very clear that this decision to enter the NBA Draft is final.

I hate to debunk the theories of the sentimentalists out there, but this wasn’t a difficult decision for Chris. He has wanted to do this for a long time. I accepted that way back in January when I heard a story about Chris getting into a heated argument on a road trip with a staff member because he wanted to drop a class. I won’t reveal which class, but let’s just say it sounded like the kind of class that would give anybody a good opportunity to help their GPA. I’m not criticizing Chris for that, by the way. I’m just telling you, he had mentally prepared for this to be his last year for quite awhile. And I don’t blame him. Talk to his mother some time. Find out about the circumstances he came from. His mother only came to Memphis a few times to watch him play because she simply couldn’t afford to come more often. When she told me that she was getting ready to retire — a fact I reported right after the season — it doesn’t take much to put two and two together.

Would CDR make more money potentially by staying and entering a weaker draft in 2009? Probably. But nothing’s guaranteed — except for the fact that CDR will be a millionaire if he gets picked in the first round, which is pretty darn likely. So don’t be selfish. Just be happy a very likeable person who represented Memphis well will get an opportunity to change his family’s fortunes forever.

Meanwhile, a couple people will immediately benefit from this decision: Robert Dozier and Antonio Anderson. There’s no question those two kind of got lost this year with all the talk about CDR, Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey. You take those two and put them on other teams, they are all-conference players. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Dozier could be the Tigers’ leading scorer next season — even with Tyreke Evans coming on board. Anderson, meanwhile, will get an opportunity to play point guard, which is the position NBA people project for him. Next year, those two should get a lot more shots and both be double-digit scorers. If they perform, they’ll have the opportunity to make themselves a lot of money.

Every year, I try to go hunting at least once or twice with Bill Cooksey of Avery Outdoors. He’s known more as a waterfowl hunter, but he’s also great with a turkey call.

This year, crappie fishing sort of delayed my turkey hunting. So we didn’t get to hunt together until Thursday, April 17.

But it was worth the wait.

We heard a few gobbles just before daylight. But for the first four hours of our hunt, we didn’t have much luck.

Then as we were walking back to the truck at the end of our hunt, we noticed two big gobblers standing in the middle of the road about 100 yards in front of us. This was at 10:30 a.m.

We froze and watched as the birds entered the woods to our left.

When they were finally out of sight, we ducked into the woods, too. Bill began soft calling with a glass call, and for 10 minutes we never heard a peep out of the birds.

Then when one of them finally gobbled, they were right on top of us.

They had circled around through the woods, and we could hear them crashing through briars, bushes and tree limbs to get to us.

When they finally came into the clearing, Bill made a perfect shot at about 25 yards. It was the only shot we had because I was facing the opposite direction.

The bird weighed 17 pounds with a thick 10-inch beard.

I’ve often heard turkey hunting described as “hours of boredome, interrupted occasionally by a few moments of absolute terror.”

I think that’s a little harsh, but I understand the statement.

When you’re turkey hunting, one minute you’re walking a down dirt road thinking about what you want for lunch. Then the next minute you’re sitting against a tree with your heart pounding so loud you’re afraid the approaching bird will hear it.

It’s quite a rush - even when you’re not the one who pulls the trigger.

Tyreke Evans announced yesterday he’s ready to play for the Memphis Tigers. Already, people are trying to complicate an issue that is quite simple. Dana O’Neil penned an entire story on ESPN.com on the completely symbolic premise that Evans will sign his Letter of Intent when John Calipari signs his contract extension.

Look, here’s the deal, and you can put it in any terms you want: If John Calipari is coaching at Memphis next season, Tyreke Evans will be playing at Memphis. If John Calipari is coaching somewhere else, Tyreke Evans will be playing somewhere else.

Signing a contract extension doesn’t change that fact. Signing a letter of intent doesn’t change that fact. John Calipari can sign his extension and still walk away to an NBA job if he is offered an NBA job that he wants. If that were to happen, Tyreke Evans’ letter isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I’m not suggesting Calipari will leave; in fact, I’ve said all along that the odds are strongly in favor of him coming back. But obviously his name has been brought up in some media outlets for the Bulls and the Knicks jobs, so it’s worth addressing. Just don’t tie to whether or not he signs his contract extension, because that’s not the issue. And for the record, the Memphis coaching staff is expecting to receive a signed letter from Tyreke in the next day or two, despite what was written on ESPN.

Now that Derrick Rose has announced he’s going into the NBA draft we wait for CDR to announce his intentions. He’s got 12 days to make this decision and I hope he reads this and makes what I believe is the right one. I think his decision was affected by Cal’s extension being signed, sealed and delivered. But if he hasn’t made up his mind, I hope this influences him.
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Pretty much everybody in the know expects Evans, the McDonald’s All-American guard from Philadelphia, to pick Memphis tomorrow when he announces his college choice. All you have to do is read the story I wrote in today’s Commercial Appeal quoting his brother or this one from the Philadelphia Daily News to get a sense of where the kid appears to be leaning.

But how about this one today, from a live ESPN.com chat with Evans and a couple other high school prospects playing in the Jordan Brand All-American Game on Saturday?

Willie (Portland, OR): Tyreke, Kemba, Drew, and Ed, which NBA players did you watch/idolize growing up?

Tyreke Evans: (12:50 PM ET ) I watched Penny Hardaway when he was coming up, how he played and how he got a lot of assists.

Too much.