I was reading through the thread about lake classification and it got me thinking about my water and how I fish it.

you guys are good, however I am not and I can not figure out where MY waters would fall in all that, Where I live the land was cleared in the late 50's and they created a series of canal systems with a few larger lakes here and there, I belive that the lakes were mostly pre-existing and they just shaped the shoreline to suit the design plan, but as far as I can tell most lakes appear to be just flat structure-less "plains" and I have yet to catch a fish in them nearly all my fish are caught in the canals themselves, the only fish I have down here are LMB, carp, gar, bluegill and chichlids.

I guess my real question is how can better fish this type of systemthan I do now? there is not much structurre or features to the bottom of my water, I do okay fishing docks,shore line weeds and bridges but I feel I am missing out on some lunkers because I have a hard time relating tips and techniques that I read about because they reffer to "natural" lakes and mine are far from that.

I have thought about planting some of my own structure in "secret" places but other than that I cant think of another way to target fish. right now I have most success on senkos and trick worms under docks and occasionally get bit on spinners and buzzbaits, sometimes shallow crank baits work. but for the most part I feel I am limited in where I can target fish.

What do you guys think? Am I missing something or should I stick to what I am doing so far, I would like to get more numbers than I do now because I can go out all day on any given day and on average only boat 4 or 5 fish.

My first question would be, "are there any lunkers in these flat plains?"  I just mapped the bottom of my neighborhood lake where the bottom is flat as a dish at 24 feet and my fish finder did not see a single one hanging on the bottom and darn few anywhere over that plain.  A few stragglers here and there but mostly concentrated near what little structure there is, like the bank drop off and the one ditch I found.  So, if there not there don't go there.

But like you, most of my days are 4 to 6 fish so what do I know?  I fished 5 hours today for two brim and one dink.  Missed the best one of the day because I had the drag set at about one half pound! He ran to the lily pads and was gone. What a dummy.