badhatharry

If your fish were aggressive enough to attack shadows, I'd be thinking Buzzbait or working a spinnerbait thru the branches and letting it helicopter as it comes off. Also, as someone else said, skipping a bait...maybe a weedless grub or tube or lizard, as far back as you can get. Good luck

I followed this advice right up til the time I stopped fishing 15 years ago. Now that I've taken up the sport again, my gear is still fully functional and ready to use.

One of my best hours of bass fishing came in the middle of a thunder/lightning storm. It was like the priest in Caddyshack who wouldn't come off the course in a lightning storm because he was having the game of his life. Anyway, I always slow way down and fish tight to cover. This is one of my favorite times to flip the heavy junk and pry 'em out of there. If you're targeting smallies, think smaller baits and a real finesse presentation. Good Luck

I was cruising around looking for a good bass fishing forum to join and I find one where the administrator lives 5 miles away? What are the odds? Anywho....I've been bass fishing all my life but abruptly quit about 15 years ago. Just got tired of weekend crowds and tournament pressure. I sold my Tracker but kept all my gear. Now, I'm retired and am able to fish whenever I d**n well please. It was actually my wife that insisted I buy a boat and start fishing again.....and she cooks too!. I have a couple of grandsons I need to teach now so it made sense. I found a very lightly used (less than 100 hours) Ranger TR177 and dragged it home last weekend. I took one of my grandsons out for a shakedown and everything seemed to work as advertised. I need to replace a sonar unit at the console that the previous owner couldn't live without but other than that she's ready to go. As I pulled all my old gear out of storage and started cleaning it up, I realized that much of it would seem archaic to modern fishermen but I'll bet the fish won't notice. I'm sure a 6" Slither worm will still catch fish...lol. Well, that's a long winded way of saying I'm glad to be here and look forward to "catchin up".