I went to a lake expecting to throw a squarebill and spinnerbait but got there and the water was 10 foot clear. So I did not think they would work at all this is a heavily pressured lake with largemouth/muskie/walleye/bluegill/crappie NO shad what should I have done?

Karashi's work well in that scenario

I fish primarily in waters that have 10-20’ of visibility. Ultra clear lakes. A spinnerbait is my number one producing bait. Fish that spinnerbait. 

31 minutes ago, Jar11591 said:

I fish primarily in waters that have 10-20’ of visibility. Ultra clear lakes. A spinnerbait is my number one producing bait. Fish that spinnerbait. 

any tips to do different?

when i fish clear lakes, i stay far and embrace the long bomb casts.

I also fish ultra clear water and more often than not a spinnerbait retrieved rapidly will work.  Other suggestions would be a small senko type lure, a soft jerkbait, a spybait and a scat type bait

I like topwater walking style baits, dropshots, and jerkbaits/finesse swimbaits to cover the whole water column. If it's really weedy on the bottom a small finesse jig or texas rig fluke/senko are top choices. With clear water I really try to emphasize matching the hatch; a lot of the clear waters near me have perch and brown/orange crawdads as the forage, so all my clear water baits have green/brown/black, and yellow/orange/red on them. I also like to go deeper than usual and downsize my baits.

20 minutes ago, GoneFishingLTN said:

any tips to do different?

Not really specific to clear water but I look for sparse to moderately thick greenery like milfoil, hydrilla, curly and broad leafed pond weed in the 6-18’ depth range. Long casts, let it sink to the bottom and slow roll it. When it gets hung up through the grass, RIP it out. 

Don't forget a lipless crank. You can fish one anywhere in the water column, I normally will start shallow and work my way deeper. It's actually on par with a spinnerbait when used to locate fish and you can bomb cast it in clear water, which is also in your favor.

17 hours ago, Jar11591 said:

Not really specific to clear water but I look for sparse to moderately thick greenery like milfoil, hydrilla, curly and broad leafed pond weed in the 6-18’ depth range. Long casts, let it sink to the bottom and slow roll it. When it gets hung up through the grass, RIP it out. 

I guess that’s what I’m doing wrong I usually never fish my Spinnerbait that deep. I’ve fished my chatter bait that deep but Spinnerbait usually 5 feet or less.  
 

that’s all I need to do is let Spinnerbait drop through 10+ what range and slow roll it. I’m assuming this will work just fine with no trailer.

@GoneFishingLTN should work with no trailer, but I almost always have a paddle tail swimbait trailer on my spinnerbaits.

Fish at night.

Find the slightly less clear water 👍🏼

 

It's somewhere!  It's a start.

 

The main reason clear water is tough IMHO is that bass will not be a lot of places.

 

Find heavy cover/heavy shade/10+ feet of water etc.

 

Usually if your lake is a flooded river or creek - there's a mouth of the original creek and that area tends to accumulate silt and be dirtier than the rest of the lake - good place to start.

 

I actually don't really worry about clarity much for bait selection per se - unless the fish are very conditioned and don't bite treble hook baits.  I use clarity more so to help me determine how deep and how heavy the cover I need to target is.

 

If all I had was a crankbait - I would have just thrown that crankbait and covered water and hit shallow targets that give bass a good spot to hide from birds.

@GoneFishingLTN slow rolling the deep weedlines and fishing at night is a staple for my clear water, heavy pressure lake.  Adding in a heavy swim jig/paddle tail (1/2-3/4oz) in crappie/sunfish colors would be my recommendation for the days they don't want the extra vibration/flash.

 

scott

On 5/19/2025 at 11:02 AM, GoneFishingLTN said:

I went to a lake expecting to throw a squarebill and spinnerbait but got there and the water was 10 foot clear. So I did not think they would work at all this is a heavily pressured lake with largemouth/muskie/walleye/bluegill/crappie NO shad what should I have done?

 

Are you saying there was no shad or no shade?

 

This wasn't Palo was it? LOL

 

Sounds like Palo. Extremely difficult to fish.

Not enough info about lake to really respond but in clear water the two approaches that tend to work for me are very natural presentations or very high speed/erratic presentations.

 

Natural presentations would include a Ned rig, slider head with a small worm or tube, shaky head, wacky rigged senko, 3" swimbait, spy bait.

 

Fast/erratic would include burning a crankbait, jerk bait fished fast or a topwater walking bait.

10' - 20' visibility is most of the water I fish.

Ned, wacky finesse, drop shot, shaky head, Mepps #3.

Green pumpkin magic, green pumpkin candy, watermelon red, watermelon pepper.

On 5/19/2025 at 1:40 PM, Jar11591 said:

Not really specific to clear water but I look for sparse to moderately thick greenery like milfoil, hydrilla, curly and broad leafed pond weed in the 6-18’ depth range. Long casts, let it sink to the bottom and slow roll it. When it gets hung up through the grass, RIP it out. 

 

10 hours ago, softwateronly said:

@GoneFishingLTN slow rolling the deep weedlines and fishing at night is a staple for my clear water, heavy pressure lake.  Adding in a heavy swim jig/paddle tail (1/2-3/4oz) in crappie/sunfish colors would be my recommendation for the days they don't want the extra vibration/flash.

 

scott

 

I don't mind admitting I have so much trouble with clear water lakes in the Spring that I often wait until June to go there, when there will be a well-developed deep weedline to target.  Until then, I also find clear lakes with predominantly bluegill/sunfish forage difficult to fish.   Until the deep weedline is esablished, I'm most successful making long casts to depths right around the limit of visibility from above with jigs, tubes, or deep-diving jerkbaits.  More often, however, I'm fishing murkier stuff in April-May.

We’ve been doing well on smallmouth in gin clear Beaver lake.  Ned rigs and swim baits have been the best fished with fluorocarbon making long casts in front of the boat.

10’ water clarity is about average for SoCal lakes and the reason “finesse” bass fishing is popular. Low light conditions and night solves bass lure shyness.

Tom