I've been using a Johnson Silver Minnow (JSM) since the 1960's and still rely on them when fishing areas with heavy vegetation.

 

I have used just about every trailer imaginable from pork frogs to plastics. For many years now I have been using an old school rubber spinnerbait skirt for a trailer.

 

These skirts are built around a round rubber collar. Lay the skirt out straight and insert the hook about 1/3 of the way into the collar and then turn it out. Rigged this way the skirt will stay in place.

 

You can find these shirts on Tackle Warehouse under the Humdinger Lure3s brand. I use a chartreuse/white skirt on the gold spoon, black or black/yellow on the black spoon and a solid white skirt on a silver spoon. 

 

 

On 9/1/2025 at 10:15 AM, Swamp Girl said:

I'm in a fishing funk

 

I just checked off September.  I've taken 57 trips this year, skunked 23 times, and caught 41 bass so far.   Yep, you're in a funk...   I gotta move to Maine.

5 minutes ago, DogBone_384 said:

 

I just checked off September.  I've taken 57 trips this year, skunked 23 times, and caught 41 bass so far.   Yep, you're in a funk...   I gotta move to Maine.

 

Yikes! Your fishing has been funkier than Sly and the Family Stone TIMES Earth, Wind & Fire. Maine has good fishing, for sure.

Katie my home lake is also quite shallow.  Here’s an observation that you might be apply.    This time of year, right now,  the fish are gravitating to hard bottoms, especially rock where I can find it.  Yellow perch spawn on hard packed bottoms here.  Much of the vegetation is beginning itself early fall die off.  That produces gasses bass don’t thrive in.  I have to move out to edges and look for the green stuff.  Wind blows crud to the bank.  It looks like a cappuccino on top.  I avoid that.  Any moving current helps.  I also down size my baits by 25 percent including frogs.   I don’t fish that lake much as the river provides much more action.  13 smallmouth on top water was my last outing. Good luck.

33 minutes ago, Columbia Craw said:

This time of year, right now,  the fish are gravitating to hard bottoms, especially rock where I can find it.

 

That's where I've been finding them, way off shore on big rock flats. Look behind the bass below, which I caught this morning. See how far from shore I am? Note that there are no weeds in the area. 

 

On 9/1/2025 at 11:13 PM, casts_by_fly said:

I’m with some of the others.  Sure it is later season and the fish are doing different things, but we talk about pressure and educating bass here all the time.  I have a firm belief that when you fish the same fish and same lakes all the time with the same lures that the turn off to them.  There are studies that support it and I’ve seen it with my own eyes on the lake my dad loves.  The fish were fresh stocked a couple years ago so basically unpressured like you had.  And then you fish a set of things that they love (in his case a bladed jig) and they love it.  And then they don’t.  So you rotate through the similar things that trigger the fish in the same way until you find what they will eat.  Plastics always work.  Other baits rotate through.  You become a victim of your own success, i.e. you become the pressure you’re trying to avoid.  

 

I've thought a lot about your hypothesis before replying and I'm thinking that there are just too many bass in my pond and my pal's pond for them to have learned my favored lures. AI says that an acre of water can support 80-100 bass. Maine's waterways are fertile, so if I assume an acre here can support 100 bass, making 42,000 bass in my pal's pond and my pond combined. I just didn't adapt to a pattern that I'd seen in 2024, when the bass stopped hitting my underspins and started hitting surface lures. I tried surface lures here and there, but I really needed to commit to them, which was easier when they stopped hitting my underspins. 

 

I'm excited to try the Rage Buzz Minnow (What a goofy name! It doesn't look like a minnow.) in more places. It only has one buried hook, but it's so soft that the fish don't let go, giving me time to set the hook. 

11 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

I'm excited to try the Rage Buzz Minnow. . . .

 

Another that you might check out is the Rage Shad. It's meant to drag across the surface and is basically a soft plastic buzz bait that can be rigged Texas/weedless.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, @Big Hands. The Rage Shad looks like my kind of lure. I also just bought the Sixth Sense Buzzgill. 

Thanks for this thread SwampGirl. I am going to try some of the suggestions mentioned here in this thread way down here in Florida today.

 

I tried using that AI request thing I read about in another thread, and it gave me GPS coordinates out in the middle of the lake off the tip of a point in a saddle between two deep holes- which is pretty much where you are finding them as well according to what I read above- off shore and no cover? I will put together some setups based off of this thread, and see if it can help put more fish in the boat today.

 

Glad you are catching them again! The solunar calendar says we are on an upswing, and its a 90 day, so odds are pretty good hopefully.

1 minute ago, FloridaFishinFool said:

off shore and no cover

 

Yep, that's where I've been catching them. I'm guessing that there's some structure where I'm fishing that's gathering them, but I'll likely never know, unless someone with electronics tells me what's underwater and that's unlikely, as the other anglers on the pond are primitives like me. I just know that this one area is holding bass. I'll be fishing it again tomorrow morning and I'm going to try another area that I know attracts bass from trolling through it. When the kid and I last trolled through this other area, I told the kid, "We're coming into a bass-holding area." And 30 seconds later, his rod snapped back. That's where I'll also cast tomorrow morning. 

 

And I'm going to work my new toy, the Rage Buzz Minnow over the shoreline weeds too! It'll be cool, foggy, and raining when I launch, my kind of weather.

 

Good luck today, F3! 

Thanks! We managed to boat 5 bass. Bite was tough and tough to get at.

 

We drove through rain so the boat was soaked when putting in. And we had to wait in SUV for rain and lightning to move on before fishing. And because of the rain clouds I chose to not be out in the middle of a lake holding lightning rods in our hands so until those rain clouds had move far enough away we had to spend our time early on hugging the shoreline using trees to block storm winds, and provide taller lightning attractors than us. We had no issues with that thankfully.

 

I also chose to keep boat near our only cover on the lake which was a bridge we could get under if needed.

 

But this was my 12 year old son's first time bass fishing again. He did it when 3 years old and he holds the record for the youngest family member to cast by himself, retrieve a lure by himself, and catch and land a bass all by himself- at just 3 years old! I got it on video too.

 

So he and my other son moved away from fishing to their cellphones, laptops, video games, etc. and he is just now returning to fishing at 12 because all his buddies fish and he wants to fish with them. So I have been getting him some saltwater gear for that.

 

Oh, and he told me he has learned his lesson about telling his buddies at school all about his secret spot in New Smyrna Beach area- the Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve area. He said now they all want to fish in his secret spot. So he has learned real fast to not tell everyone.

 

But yesterday was his first day back to bass fishing and I gave him front casting deck and trolling motor control- his first time as captain which he needs to work on- as he got so caught up in learning to read the water and watch for actively feeding fish all around him to cast to that he completely spaced out on boat control. So I had to step in numerous times for that.

 

I'd like to say I let him win yesterday, but really he kicked my behind out there. We always compete on the First fish caught, biggest fish caught, and most fish caught. He won all 3 categories.

 

But he learned another funny lesson yesterday as well though unintended on my part for sure, but he did not think so.

 

We were trolling past a small channel or incoming creek about 25 feet wide and I told him to cast up in there. We both saw actively feeding bass at the mouth of the creek. I let him cast first. He said a bass picked it up and he tried to hook him but missed. I had cast much further up in there than he did but as my lure came back to the lake I got a hit and set the hook on a fish and all I heard was "YOU CAUGHT MY FISH!"  Ooops. Yeah, maybe I did.

 

And I can tell you I will never hear the end of that one! I had to hear about it all the way back home too. And how he kicked my behind. It was kind of funny to hear him say after winning "gee dad I'm a better fisherman than YOU are!" Un huh, OK sure you are!

 

All in all if had hooked all the fish that hit for me I would have had 5 fish. I got 2 in the boat. He should have had around 7, but managed 3. And he was catching them on weedless paddletail flukes and he used one of my rods, a 7'6" MH F spinning rod with Shimano stradic 4000 on it and 14 pound braid catching his first schoolie bass on a rat'l trap. Until yesterday he did not even know what a schooling bass was, but on the lake we were on they were busting up all around us just out of reach so I crossed the lake to other side to work back to boat ramp and he was swinging away with it out in middle of lake with no cover as this thread mentions, and caught his first rat'l trap schoolie. Boy was he thrilled.

 

I used this fish to show him how to settle down, and not reel in the fish, but use the rod to carefully control the fish back to the boat and how to reel down on them and pull in with the rod. He got it quickly and really seemed to enjoy it.

 

You know, if you LET them win, I think it keeps their interest more.

 

The 51 year old boat may have been free, but the memories are priceless.

 

 

I would suggest smaller swimbaits like Storm WildEye Swim Shad, in 4" or even the 3.25" version for a small swimbait this time of year.

 

I'd also move off the shore, pretty much regardless of how your lake looks like. If you have hard bottom in the deepest spot of your shallow lake, it would make sense they'd be there. Try dragging a finesse jig across that. Last week, I noticed fish were not in spots I normally catch them but there were a few further from the shoreline in deeper water in that area.

9 hours ago, Boomstick said:

 

I'd also move off the shore, pretty much regardless of how your lake looks like.

 

That's what I've done.

 

9 hours ago, Boomstick said:

If you have hard bottom in the deepest spot of your shallow lake, it would make sense they'd be there.

 

You are so right. That's where I've been catching them. Three from last night, all caught on hard bottom in the middle of the pond:

 

@Swamp Girl it sounds like you've got the right idea. You can only do so much when the bite drops. By the end of the month, the bite should at least be more consistent. This time a year, you get one day colder than the prior and it's tough to catch them the next couple of days.

 

It's amazing how quick they went from eating anything that moves to barely eating anything at all.

 

At this point it's a matter of finding what they'll bite that doesn't get caught up in weeds.

I’d consider ned rigging or drop shotting. Maybe even a weightless fluke near the hard bottoms. 
 

if you want to go to the weeds try running a bladed jig make them want to come out of the weeds. Use a slim trailer. 

Curious what the main forage is?

Golden shiners. My numbers have ticked up. I had been casting big paddle tails on underspins when they'd quit hitting them. I'm surface fishing now and throwing crayfish.

34 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

Golden shiners. My numbers have ticked up. I had been casting big paddle tails on underspins when they'd quit hitting them. I'm surface fishing now and throwing crayfish.

 

I gave the underspin a try the other day.

 

3" Mayor in a very natural shad color (not sure exact color). 1/4 oz Dirty Jigs underspin.

 

At first glance, I was thinking how is this not going to catch something. Doesn't get much more realistic.

 

Boy was I right.

 

I have a nice spinning rod that doesn't get used much anymore that might be a dedicated smallish swimbait rod now.

32 minutes ago, HawkeyeSmallie said:

At first glance, I was thinking how is this not going to catch something. Doesn't get much more realistic.

 

I threw a couple 3-inchers into my tacklebox. The 4-inchers might not be working, but the 3-inchers....

8 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

 

I threw a couple 3-inchers into my tacklebox. The 4-inchers might not be working, but the 3-inchers....

 

I'm pretty sure you can catch every fish in the lake with the 3".

 

3" if you want numbers.

4" if you want size.

 

JMO.