LD483

thanks for the tips but if I am fishing water that is 60-65 degrees for post spawn fish what pattern do you thing would work best? fishing a creek channel that runs close to a cove? how about a breakline in front of a cove that breaks off of the main creek channel that runs thru the lake. I guess my question here is what would be my best bet for trying to catch these prespawn bass? topwater, crankbaits, slow rolled spinners/ and where should I fish them?

Hi everyone this is my second post, will try to make as short as possible. A friend and I went to Newton Lake in Illinois which is a power plant lake 03-06-05 as we are going to be fishing in our first tournement there this Sunday 03-13-05. I went there with the plan of motoring up the warm water arm until I saw temps between 70-75 then fishing any visable cover that was available. The warmest I had access to was 74. Long story short I thru, Zara spook which pretty much got nill except for a 2 pounder that got away over a log, I also fished a Minnow bait, a dropshot with a worm, and jig n pig and a Rattle trap on and off most of the day with no %100 sure bites. My friend caught a 2-3 pounder off of a submerged tree directly off the main channel in about 4 feet using a tube with on a drop shot rig. Until the last 2 hours of the day he caught nothing until he switched to a Chomper creature bait with a 1/4 oz jig head. once he switched to this he started getting bites. caught 2 more small ones had quite a few bites and missed a 5 pounder which thru it in the air. Most of the people there were throwing spinnerbaits and I hate to throw the same thing everyone else is using. some of the posts I saw suggested using a carolina rigged tube or lizard or crankbait. My Question is do you think I should have found cooler water to fish shallow visable structure where the fish would be in more of a prespawn pattern using baits I suggested and I am used to or should I go with a carolina rig that I am not very familiar with and try to fish cooler points and submerged structure in 10-20 feet depts. TO add what temp should I be looking for to fish topwater in a powerplant lake in winter should it be the warmest water I have access to? What temp usually do fish start hitting topwater before the spawn? whew........ hopefully someone has a little insight I would sure appreciate not getting skunked again.