STINAR85

I had great luck the other day here in Illinois with a 5" Storm Rattling soft jerkbait.. Just letting it sink very slowly while rigged weightless, and giving it a few twitches occassionally.. Caught 4 fish in 90 min. last Sunday doing this! Biggest one was just under 3 lbs... the water temp was also about 43-45 at the time.

Excalibur Spit'n Image topwater White/Chart. Tandem 3/8 oz. Spinner Mann's 1- Series Crankbait

Hello everyone.. as you can tell, I'm new... I just have a few questions first off... I mostly fish at a private pond(ex strip pit) owned by a friend that is about 25 acre's of area, with about 80% of the bottom covered in thick coontail. The water is also very clear and 25 feet or so at deeper parts. We didn't start fishing it til late last summer, and the fishing was mostly good the 8 or so times we went out. We used mostly topwater lures such as chartruese buzzbaits, jitterbug, and an excalibur spittin image. I was wondering about good pre-spawn tactics for a lake with such vegitation...? I have a good idea of where some good spawning areas are on a rock bed in much shallower water(3-4 feet) and fewer weeds.. Crankbaits are pretty much useless in this lake.. We've used spinnerbaits occassionally with some luck. I'm curious to try a senko this spring, since I'm really trying to try new approaches this year. What do you guys think? BTW, We've caught about three 4+ lb. fish, and 2 crappie over 17" for the larger ones last year