I have a local reservoir about 15 minutes from my house that I have fished about half a dozen times now.  As of yet I have not had any real success other than about 2-3 small bass and a few small pickerel.  Basically it is a very shallow reservoir with an average depth of about 5'.  There is very little structure however there are tons of cover in the form of weeds and lilly pads.  In fact about 2/3 of the entire lake has lilly pads on the surface and the rest has weeds that almost reach the surface.  Because of that it is nearly impossible to throw any type of crank bait with exposed hooks.  Overall it can be very frustrating.  As of yet I have been throwing mostly spinnerbaits that tend to bounce through the weeds, also buzz baits where there is room to not get hung up in the pads, and lastly some tubes and Senkos.  Basically no matter what I throw most of my day is spent reeling in weeds.  In fact the weeds throughout the lake are so thick that it's very hard to get accurate depth readings from my fish finder.  Anyway, I know there are bass in the lake and I'm just wondering if anyone has advice for me to try something else that I haven't tried yet.  Thanks.

Get you some frogs both the hollow body and soft plastic style.  Run these over the pads and see what you get then.  It sounds like one of the lakes I fish.  Also I like to take a zoom trick worm and rig it weightless and just swim it through the weeds.  Both of these work real good for me.

As of now the lake is at 73 degrees most days.  Is that warm enough for them to really start hitting on top waters?  Another local fisherman said wait until mid summer to throw frogs.  He said it's not until then that the bass start moving towards the surface.  Do you think there is any truth to that?

With all the weed cover they might not be that shallow.  It never hurts to try.  I watched a guy throwing top water in cooler water and he was catching fish just fine.

I used to fish a small lake in NY that was almost the same way.  It had a few boulders throughout.  Anyway try a white/chartruese spinnerbait with silver and gold blades.  Fish it in the pockets in and around the lily pads and weeds.  Also try a frog on the pads.  My favorite is a pop -n- grass frog but there are many different kinds.  Texas rigged worms worked well also.

I've got a chartreuse and a white spinnerbait.  I haven't had any luck with the white yet but I'll keep trying.  On the chartreuse I've caught just mostly pickerel.  In fact there are so many pickerel in that lake I almost wonder if it's hurting the bass population.    

In any case I think what I really need to find is a weedless topwater lure that floats even with a hook in it.  It seems as though anything that sinks even a few inches gets wrapped up in all the weeds.  I need to find something that will just skip right over top of them.