The last time the EverStart Series visited Alabama’s Lake Eufaula, a promising young pro named Pat Fisher won with a 17-pound, 14-ounce limit of largemouths he plucked from flooded bushes on dirty-water flats at the lake’s upper reaches. Fisher caught his winning bass on a Zoom tube lure and walked away with a cash prize package valued at more than $50,000.

Roughly six years earlier, Lexington, N.C., pro David Fritts keyed on sandy, mid-lake flats and earned $100,000 when he amassed 25 pounds, 13 ounces on the final day of the 1997 Wal-Mart FLW Tour event at Eufaula. Not surprisingly, the crankbait wizard relied heavily on hard bodies to collect his winning bass.

According to Fritts, those are just two of the potential patterns the EverStart Series field might want to consider when the trail stops at the popular southern fishery in early March.

“The weather is going to have a big impact on how and where the fish are positioned in this tournament,” Fritts said. “The bass are going to be up toward the shallows, but how far is going to depend a lot on water temperature.”

If water temperatures are in the upper 50s or low 60s, Fritts suggests targeting creek-channel breaks and stump flats in 5 to 12 feet of water with crankbaits and Carolina rigs.

Should surface temps stabilize in the in mid-60s, pitching and flipping jigs and soft plastics around laydowns, stumps and flooded bushes from the bank out to 7 feet could yield some solid limits.