Flowers are always the perfect gift – for friends, lovers and even anglers.

The role of flowers in my fishing is significant and made abundantly clear last week during a fishing trip on one of our lakes known for its ample acres of aquatic vegetation.

Oddly, however, I heard the evidence of the flowers before I recognized the blooms with my eyes.

Flowers play no less a role in waterways as in terrestrial ecosystems. Birds, bees, bugs and bigger critters all rely on flowers whether they’re rooted in soil or bobbing on waves.

With summer heating up, my recent fishing trip was planned around finding shady water where the bass would be lurking to avoid direct sunlight – and few lake features offer as much overhead shade as lily pads.

The pads themselves are great, but even more effective in attracting bass once their buds burst into full flower. The bright white sweet-smelling flowers attract a variety of flying insects, many of which end up in the water where hungry bluegills await.

Bass anglers know that where they find bluegills, largemouths are in the vicinity. That was exactly the case Tuesday.

I heard the bluegills before I caught any bass. The ‘gills gave away their locations thanks to the distinctive sucking sounds emanating from the pad clusters as they slurped in bugs that were attracted to the fragrant lily blossoms.

It was a food chain rooted in bass-fishing heaven. The lake bottom had the perfect soil for lily tubers to flourish and send their broad green leaves to the surface in clusters broad enough to offer shade and cooler water for prey and predator. Insects buzzed the blooms and crawled on the flowers, many finding their way into the water where bluegills sucked them in.

Lurking bass were alert to opportunities to ambush the bluegills – and the beaver-style soft plastic Texas rigged on the stout hook tethered to my 20-pound-test fluorocarbon line and flipping stick.

Occasionally, an especially aggressive bass exploded through the pads in air-strikes aimed at dragonflies hovering near the lilies.

If you are a bass angler, you can’t help but grin when you discover the perfect circle of life playing out in front of your eyes and ears at a lily pad field.

The sight-and-sound sensory overload turned physical every time a bass hunting under the pads found my lure. Strikes were unmistakable and hooksets had to be made with

enough force to turn the largemouths toward the opening where the bait had slithered into the water.

None of the 13 fish I boated came easily. The pad stems are sinewy, and the rampaging bass can easily wrap the line around a mess of greenery. Each encounter was a full-bore wrestling match, testing my rod, reel and line as I worked to winch them aboard.

Some of the fish that hit my bait, perhaps even half of them, got the best of me. Such are the odds in hand-to-hand combat with lily pad bass.

When you do eventually work them out of the tangles of stems and plate-size leaves, the grins turn to high-fives in celebration of your well-earned catch.

Jack Wollitz’s book, “The Common Angler,” is a collection of stories that explain why anglers are passionate about fishing. Send a note to jackbbaass@gmail.com.