How productive is it to fish at night ( If at all). What type of bait shiners, worms ?

I used to fish midwest lakes at night in the spring and fall with great success.  I used mostly spinner baits(single spins) with pork frog(no 11) Always caught a lot of fish and some really big ones too.  

Night Fishing can be very rewarding, especially on lakes that are heavily pressured. Good baits during the night are black buzzbaits, jigs, spinnerbaits, and other dark colored plastics.

Oh I enjoy fishing at night with a good topwater bait.  You only know if they hit it when it pulls away from you.  So setting the hook is a fun challenge.  Most of the time with that they would end up setting it themselves.

I heard that it is good to fish at night on a lake that has alot of boat traffic during the day. I also heard a story of some one using a black buzzbait at night and catching big bass. But if it is a lake that is traveled on during the days then id fish deep and in places where traffic is as slow as pissible.

In the summertime I fish mostly at night. It's to hot during the day. A buzz bait in the pads is great fun. Just have to be careful because a gator will also hit a buzz bait. You tend to catch bigger fish at night.

Im not real good with night, Cant see too good, and i have to have plenty of light if im doin something like that... Just one of those things ya no?

Between the 2 clubs I fish in we fish about 5 or 6 night tournaments a year. We fish these in the dead of summer when the lakes are crazy during the day. Start at 9:00 pm and fish till 7:00am. Seem to have the best luck on black spinner baits, black worms and black buzzbaits. I also do well on green pumpkin. Once the lake calms down, we find fish in all the same spots we have found them during the slower days. Just before first light.......HANG ON.....lol

Fish now, sleep later,

Snag

I don't fish much at night but I do have one little story you might enjoy. Last June I was on Bull Shoals throwing Rogues for walley. There was no moon and we're sitting in 200+ ft. of crystal clear water casting into the dark at shear cliffs. It was a little past 10:00 and after fishing all day, it was about time to call in the dogs. Between the three of us we boated seven keepers and four short walley, so we were doing something right. Most importantly, Bull Shoals has the potential of producing the next world record. So, on what turned out to be the last cast of the evening...I got SMACKED! Now I'm using a MBR844C which I often use for striper and bull reds, so I know what 25+ feels like on this equipment...and I was there. This fish ran and shook and fought like who-da-thunk-it. Fifteen or twenty minutes into the fight my buddies finally get a spotlight on the fish, probably twenty yards out from the boat and fifteen to twenty feet deep. Well...it tuned into a gar! It was too big to net and although we didn't really want to get it in the boat, there's no way we could have hoisted it up. I got it to the boat and with a great deal of effort, we were able to unhook the monster and let it go. We guessed it weighed around 80 lbs but it could have been anywhere from 50-100. So much for the world record walley, but it was quite a night.

I've been fishing at night during the summer in PA for years now. I've had a lot of luck with a jointed black jitterbug and a black hartbeater buzzbait.