Florida pro JT Kenney is on the record with his May 2026 bass forecast for the Palm Bay area of Florida's Space Coast, and his read of the local lakes is short, blunt and a little contrarian.
Kenney's headline is that water levels around Palm Bay and the surrounding bass fisheries are still running low for late spring. Most anglers would treat that as a problem. Kenney is not most anglers.
"Water levels are still a little bit low, but any little bit deeper places you can find, whether it's the little ditches and channels that run around through Headwaters and Stick Marsh, Garcia, all those places they're fishing well, but you got to find that little bit deeper water."
In other words, fish the ditches and pits inside the major Space Coast bass lakes, not the open flats. With less water across the system, the bass are stacked into the small slices of structure that still hold depth, and they are easier to find than usual.
The other half of his May report is even simpler. With those fish parked tight to cover, surface lures have been doing the damage.
"Topwater. Buzzbaits and frogs have been absolutely phenomenal," Kenney said.
For anglers tracking the late-spring playbook on Headwaters Lake, the T.M. Goodwin Garcia River Diversion Reservoir and the larger Stick Marsh complex, that combination of pattern - shallow grass edges, hard cover, and a moving topwater - is a familiar formula for the warming Florida bite. Kenney's instruction is to lean into it now before the seasonal rains lift the lakes.
That is where the contrarian streak comes in. Most local conversations this time of year start with anglers complaining about how badly the system needs rain. Kenney is not chasing the rain.
"Like I said, I'm sure in May we're probably going to start to get some rain, water levels will come up. Be honest with you, I kind of like them where they are cuz it's putting the fish right where they're easy to find."
Until that next big rain event, his read is that there is no reason to over-think the search. Any little bit of deeper water - whether it is a ditch, a canal or one of the old pits cut into some of the Space Coast lakes - is where to start, and the edges of those depressions and the grass lines around them are where the fish will be.
"That's where you want to look right now around the edges of that and the edges of grass is exactly where all the bass are here in the Palm Bay area."
Kenney closes the May 2026 forecast with an open invitation to anglers travelling to the Space Coast over the next few weeks.
"So, come on down and catch some of our big old bass."
For visiting bass anglers, the takeaway is simple: skip the obvious open-water spots, find the ditches and pits inside Headwaters, Stick Marsh and Garcia, and have a frog and a buzzbait tied on before the boat hits the water.