I fished a lake this weekend that is about 2000 acrs., mod. cover and vegetation and probably 35' deep.  It has 3 - 450 mg. generators on it.  The water temp. is already between 82 and 90 deg and stained.  There are some nice fish in it it but we couldn't get them to hit anything we threw.  Finally landed one about 4lbs. on a smoked pepper wacky worm.  They were hitting the surface off of points and even saw about 6 between 3 and 5lbs. in shallow water but they payed no attention to any thing we threw.  Any suggestions besides waiting till fall.

In my experiences when fishing hot water you need to go deep. Find cooler water if there is any in a powerplant lake. This fish are usually more active there. I'd try topwaters early then go to a C-rig or T-rigged worm and go deep.

well said skeeter... most of the time they'll go down to the deeper part of the lake where it's cooler. but sometimes they'll also hang out around the mouth of a cove where the creek runs into the main channel... that's usually an excellent place to fish c-rig and/or crankbaits and rat-l-traps. but if those don't work, try using 10" worms on a 5/8 oz. or 1/2 oz. texas rig. most of the time you can never go wrong with a texas rig. they'll also go back in the shallow coves and find structure there to hang out at... lilly pads provide and excellent cover for bass to hide... it's so much fun fishing lilly pads with a frog... you can always tell you're about to get a hit when you see the lilly pads moving around when they were sitting still.  also look for falling timber in those coves or even standing timber in the main part of the lake.  also you can find sholes, see where it runs off into the channel and fish that with a crankbait, rat-l-trap, c-rig, drop shot, texas rig, or even spinnerbaits.

Thanks for the input.  I wish I would have tried the c-rig.  There are suposed to be some for-real monsters in the lake, but it won't be long until the water is probably around 100 deg.  Maybe I can hit it again once or twice before it does.

Burn a trap or spinnerbait.

Like said above I go deep.  I usually start by throwing a dd22 on main lake poits, carolina rig, of throw a jig. Usually works great for me.