So last night I went out from 6:30 until 9...what I would consider prime time...and caught 13 bass. Mostly dinks but had 3 or 4 quality fish. Today I decided to challenge myself and went out from 1230 until 3...what I would consider the worst time of day. I ended up catching 9...again dinkville with maybe 2 good fish in there. I caught 3 flipping a jig...no surprise there. Caught 1 on a shad rap...also not surprising. What did surprise me was I caught 5 and had several other bites on a frog. The reason it shocked me was I wasn't fishing weeds or pads. Several bites were around rock or wood but most of them on random nothing banks with no cover. Still learning!

 

You've had some good action, sounds like they might be post-spawn bucks.

I know what you mean about nothing banks. One of the best spots on a local lake is virtually barren.

On closer inspection it supports nitella, which is a very short-growing grass like sandgrass. 

 

Roger

This pond/small lake I'm fishing has almost no vegetation. It is bordered by a river and has been flooded 5 or 6 times in the past 4 years..so the grass got tore out and it never gets established before getting ripped out again. Only thing I can think is with all the flooding maybe there is a lot of silt and mud in places making those nothing banks more appealing because there is at least hard bottom? I'm not sure...kinda throwing ideas out

 

That's true about a hard bottom.

In the absence of vegetation, the value of docks, timber and rocks goes thru the roof.

If you can find weeds and wood together, so much the better. 

 

Aside from cover though, a step in the bottom is always gold (Structure).

A hard bottom is preferred, because a bottom of muck or silt can't maintain a bottom step. 

Most lakes in Florida are basically flat saucers, and I well remember when Ish Monroe

won on Okeechobee. He concentrated on a 1-ft wrinkle in the bottom that he found. 

 

Roger 

I have always find that around 1 or 2 in the afternoon the fishing picks up again for a couple of hours. I dont hear a lot of people talk about it, but i feel that there is a mid day bite.

I am an early morning and late afternoon/evening kind of guy...

15 minutes ago, Heartland said:

I am an early morning and late afternoon/evening kind of guy...

Myself as well...normally...may be an all day guy now

 

The only way to identify peak feeding periods, is to spend the entire day on the water.

Sad but true, nothing in fishing is constant, as a result, timing & location both change with each season.

 

Roger

17 hours ago, RoLo said:

 

The only way to identify peak feeding periods, is to spend the entire day on the water.

Sad but true, nothing in fishing is constant, as a result, timing & location both change with each season.

 

Roger

Lucky for me, spending the entire day on the water is my favorite thing in the world 

When I was first starting to get into bass fishing , I was at a local lake and saw one of the club members who often won the tourneys held there . There was a nothing looking bank that I rarely seen anyone fish and I asked him if he fished it much . He replied "Why would I , there is nothing there ." Well I fished that bank and caught fish . That was over 40 years ago and I still hit that bank regularly .

Hopefully, you'll always still be learning, and open to surprises. The flip-side philosophy simply sets us up for disappointment.

 

"Nothing" banks have "something", we just don't know what they are. Over time those surprises build, and we may get to recognize more and more of those "somethings".

 

Gee, reminds me of a comment a Native American elder said in an interview: "My grandmother told me life's path is strewn with little bits of paper, each with a message. If I watch for them, and read every one, I'll know the way of life. Guess... I must have missed a few along the way."

 

2 minutes ago, Paul Roberts said:

Hopefully, you'll always still be learning, and open to surprises. The flip-side philosophy simply sets us up for disappointment.

 

"Nothing" banks have "something", we just don't know what they are. Over time those surprises build, and we may get to recognize more and more of those "somethings".

 

Gee, reminds me of a comment a Native American elder said in an interview: "My grandmother told me life's path is strewn with little bits of paper, each with a message. If I watch for them, and read every one, I'll know the way of life. Guess... I must have missed a few along the way."

 

Guess that's why most of us do this...the discovery of the unknown and trying to understand it