4 hours ago, BassNJake said:

Skip a toad.

Excellent around docks especially when everyone and their brother is throwing a jig or senko at em

 

There are no docks around here but when I visit LOZ or Table Rock I'll try it and others ..

I'm in Ontario and for whatever reason docks aren't amazing. They hold fish, but not to the point where they are outstanding. I find lilypads are MUCH better. I'm assuming it is because there are other weeds surrounding the pads whereas typically docks here have no weeds beneath them. 

 

So they are my #1 option, with the caveat that there has to be some water beneath them. A lily pad in half a foot of water is no good, nor if there are too many weeds i.e. totally choked full of weeds. 

any tree stump or stickup in 2-4 foot of water when the temp is between 50 and 80 is a high percentage area

 

over 80 degrees i focus on grass, under 50 im back to stumps but deeper.

On the boat fishing bigger lakes in my neck of the woods (New Jersey) 

 

-Pontoon boats

-Docks

-Steep bluffs/rocky bank.

-Weed beds or as we call them up here cabbage fields. 

-Lilly pads

-Overhanging trees. 

-submerged timber/stumps. 

how do you fish standing timber? I know a spot.  really tall trees poking out of the water.  in about 40 feet deep water.  I have taken some fish, but not the hotspot I thought it would be.  (In middle of image).  it is a long haul to get there on my kayak, but doable.

 

Cover? I was all about Tules when I got into it. Lakes have switched and so has the cover. Now I seek rocky outcroppings regularly. Structure? Cant beat a main lake point IMO. 

In the dead of summer and when conditions are right; lilly pad canopies for me. It’s my guaranteed “go-to”.

On 9/28/2022 at 5:47 PM, Darth-Baiter said:

how do you fish standing timber? I know a spot.  really tall trees poking out of the water.  in about 40 feet deep water.  I have taken some fish, but not the hotspot I thought it would be.  (In middle of image).  it is a long haul to get there on my kayak, but doable.

 

I fish it vertically. Either a jig or a pegged, texas rigged creature bait on a 1/4 oz weight at most.

 

Around the perimeter of the lay down; spinnerbait.

On 9/14/2022 at 7:55 PM, Log Catcher said:

I catch most LMB fishing around wood lay downs or stumps. It is usually better if there is rock around.

This. It helps if there is another kind of cover around like vegetation. Double whammy! And it also helps if deeper water is close by. Anywhere I see 2 kinds of vegetation. Weed edges. Around here, weed edges are the dividing line between shallow and deep water.

Here in Florida, pads are by far the best LM cover.  This is true on the St. John's River and in all the lakes.  Pad fish average larger than any other cover.  

Now that we're into fall and the water is back down into the mid 60's here, there's not much in the way of weeds left, just pads and broad leaf pond weed. Shallow brushy tangles like this will just keep getting better and will hold bass until winter draw down. Then it will be all about sun baked laydowns for me. 

This pine tree top is in 9' at full drawdown level and produced a 6# and a bunch of smaller LM for me last December when the water was low 40's.

 

On 9/14/2022 at 8:01 PM, LrgmouthShad said:

Lily pads. If I see em I'm fishing them. Nothing I can do about it

x2 

Milfoil and coontail, followed by matted Hyacinth.  When I can find it, eel grass is high on the list as well, but the hurricanes we got the past few years wiped out most of the eel grass and it hasn't really come back yet.

Big rock, be it riprap, chunk rock, ledge rock, some kind of larger rocks, or water willows. If I can find either of those, I can catch some fish. 

Points, both primary and secondary.

I like the edge of a wild rice thicket or any similar reed. I like casting parallel to them, retrieving my lure as close as possible to the cover. Like many others, I also love lily pads. 

My favorite spot to catch bass, and any cover or structure found there is where the fish happen to be at any given time.

the best largemouth cover i ever seen, is this one

 

I'm a sucker for those caves formed by overhanging trees in the summer time.  Every time I skip a bait in there I'm CONFIDENT I'm gonna get a lake record.  

 

When I see the first 4 ft of a trunk + roots sticking up out of the water at the bank and the rest of the tree disappears into the lake, I often fish every inch till I figure out where the bass are gonna be holding.  I usually catch my biggest fish on these mostly submerged trees where only a LITTLE bit is sticking up.  Bonus points if it's sticking off a point into deep water and has rock nearby.

 

Rip rap gets me every time.  I've had days where I caught 3 5 lbers in 2 hours just pitching a football jig to the water edge on rip rap near the dam and hop it down the rock face.  Usually a decisive THUNK and the fish swims AT you!  Pretty fun stuff!

 

Structure I wanna get better at:

 

Submerged offshore brush.  Grass.  Pads.  Docks.  Bridges.