At a little over half Earth's diameter, Mars barely registers a tiny disk in amateur telescopes most of the time. Even though Mars is the closest planet to Earth, the two planets orbit the sun at different velocities. Mars takes 1.88 years to make one circuit.
Earth moves faster because it is closer to the sun, taking only one year to orbit our daystar.
As a result, he planets rarely spend enough time close enough to each other to make it worthwhile to point a telescope at the elusive red planet. Throughout the rest of April and into May is one of those times. In the parlance of the astronomer, Mars is at opposition. Mars can get as close as 25 million miles from our planet, but that won't happen until 2005. Look toward the south around midnight.