Im pulling my hair out.   Went out yesterday with a friend on his lil' bass buddy.   Hit a residential canal system with ultra clear water.   Its 8ft deep with steep banks, leaving very little room for the bass to bed.   The canal is about 25 yards wide.  Its got a perfect mix of ribbon grass and sand bottom, pretty rare around my parts.   We were under a high pressure system with bright blue cloudless skies.  All in all conditions I would say call for finesse.  I have been really getting into finesse fishing and used a spinning outfit with 10lb. braid and a 6ft. floro leader.   My pal is 100% power fishing, 12-14lb line and big baits.   I dropped trick worms, senkos, fries, lizards in and about the beds, nothing!  One fish in 5 hours.   The bass were both still beddings and in post spawn, easily visible all about.   My buddy using a 10" ribbon tail worm caught 2 blind casting.  Using a bass pattern Super Spook he caught a dozen bass.  Bright skies, high pressure and using a walkin' bait caught between 11 and 1pm.   He had tons of bass swirl at his spook and I would trow right at them with a trick worm, nothing.  He'd let the spook splash down hard and loud in that clear water and it never spooked a one!   Its tough being the co angler and mostly fishing used water but man, this was a day of total contradictions.

Sometimes they just don't follow the rules

Well not really.. when the bass are on beds there is a hand full of lures that will work. If the bass are chasing TOPWATER works great even on bed fish. if the bass are feeding up on shad any topwater that makes a lot of noise and sounds like something injured or trying to get away and draws attention to it. It works even better in stained water. In super clear water little finesse worms work great but you can not overlook a topwater bite in the afternoon particularly if you can find areas with some shade. If you see shad on top and bass chasing a super spook Jr. at times can be the way to go. Bandit has a spook that sprays water that will draw fish up to the top quick. It kinda sounds like a wounded baitfish or a shad being chased. Also early in the year the bass are not as spooky and you can get away with a lot. Sometimes the noise will tweak the curiosity of a bass. Also if the bass just made the nest or is fired up by the bluegills they will slam a topwater bait quick. Now the blind casting a worm...I do that a lot also lol particularly on fish in transition or when I can't see beds. Sometimes you will have bass that are not on beds but are looking for a place to bed that will cruise around. If you can stop them and get their attention they are catchable. One ways I find them is to blind cast in the areas close to a spawning area. I try to fan cast the area and really take my time to cover it. I have done the same thing with a dropshot before you just got to lead the fish and get their attention.

I'll always give a topwater a try, even on the brightest of days.  I have had too many instances of bass hitting topwaters when their not "supposed" to.

The problems with the "rules" is that there are no "rules" to the fish LOL.  There is no such thing as a "gimme" in bass fishing.  

T Mike

i like that mike thats what i was thinking  ;D ;D

i've seen that happen a million times.i've caught fish on buzzbaits in 40 degree water and had guys use finesse when i powerfished and kicked their butts.and then times when you think you should power fish you need finesse.