Hello everyone, my names Shawn and I'm from the Southeast corner of Iowa. I've been tournament fishing for 4 years now and finally got a boat bought that is actually built for bass fishing. I keep telling myself that I can't find fish. During our Tuesday night tourney last night, I found a spot and I was swamped with 13 inch fish. And all night long too. Are the big ones near? FYI they were super shallow, on laterall laydowns, and all they wanted was a watermelon weightless senko. Thanks everyone.

Try backing off the lay downs a little bit or look for the nearest drop off close to the lay downs it doesn't have to be a drastic drop, 1-2ft, try the same bait in that area, they obviously liked it enough!!

Ya could move to Oregon where a 12 incher is a keeper!!  Sorry had ta say that.  Since moving east it's interesting to release fish 14 inches and up.

Welcome to the board.  Finding fish is the most difficult part of this great sport. Granted, getting them to bite is a challenge. What I think you're asking is how to find bigger fish.

Fish, big or small use similar areas for feeding and they all have one thing in common, forage availability.  If you just take this one fact into consideration (I don't recommend making decisions based solely on one factor), should the bigger fish have been there too? If you answered yes, then evidently they were either holding in the prime areas on that spot, they were not active, or they didn't want what you were offering.

If you answered possibly (good answer), the one thing you did incorrectly was to continue fishing for the 13in. fish.  A wise man once said: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

If you answered no, then you need to ask yourself where and why.  To be really successful at this sport you need to understand both the fish you're targeting and the forage they are feeding on.  The fish's habits don't change, they are fairly simple creatures. Their movements and attitudes are, however, governed by many different factors. Something as simple as a change in diet from one form of forage to another ( ) or as complex as PH or O2 levels can leave us, as anglers, confused.  The fish just react to their environment.  Go figure

This sounds like a common post spawn pattern where you are still catching the smaller males that are still shallow.  I concur with the above poster, maybe move out to the nearest point, drop, ledge, structure etc. to see if some of the females are around.  I have also found that senkos to me, produce an inordinate amount of "dinks".  They are fun, but if I fish in a tournament I rarely fish them unless nothing else is working.  Thats just my perspective, especially if you are fising those quick evening/night tournaments.

Finding fish is the hardest part of fishing, that said they don't always cooperate the way we would like them too. Landing fish is the easy part.

My personal experience has shown if all you are catching is "short" that's because only short are there.

With out knowing any thing about your body of water any thing would be a guess.

As far me I would change locations

Thanks everybody, I returned to that location today at about 10:00, with a bit of shade on it and backed way up. We ended up catching about 5 15in legals. I spent some time on the electronics and found there is a 3 foot ledge just out from where i was at. Dropped a shakey head and pulled a crank bait over it and found some better fish