right now im having a hard time hooking up in smaller lakes/ponds while finding the fish in the bigger lakes has been a simple task. every larger lake ive hit ive found the bait fish close to deep water and caught fish. bait fish plus structure and im on the fish.

in the smaller lakes/ponds ive fished bait fish, flats, rip rap, beat the banks, everything short of dynamite. its really slow right now.

anyone else seeing this?

Got a few good size in shallow cover on a Cavitron buzzbait today including this one. The 2 bigger ones were in 3-4 feet or less with thinning lily pads. It was a small shallow cove.

This guy was just over 4 on the digital scale.

Mark

On the lakes i am still finding them on the deeper weedlines. On the ponds i am like you. The last 5 outings with my daughter have been one big S K U N K!!!

Been just the opposite for me. I'm having a harder time on the bigger lakes, and killin' 'em in small ponds near the shore with a top water bait ( Rage Shad). Then again, I spend most of my time on smaller ponds anyway.

15 to 40 feet of water on jigging spoons, Drop shots, football jigs, and flutter spoons.

Just got home from my regular pond...about 5 acres. Was hittin em pretty good in about 2-3 feet of water in the weeds.

right now, nowhere...been having a tough time the last few out.

Same here last 4 trips to my local lake managed to get one small one, and skunked out the last 3.  Sadness, its slowed down big time.

I'm sorta glad it's not just me.  I fished a bunch of hours on Percy Priest near Nashville, skunked.  My local lake produced nothing for three weeks, top, bottom and the middle.  Cranks, worms or surface lures got nada.

Just about 4 days ago, the local 40 acre lake started to wake up on worms on the bottom in about 5 to 10 feet of water.  This Saturday they were schooling on the surface and I got about seven.  Sunday the same activity but fewer fish.  Today, nada again.  Oh well.

Al my buds say mid October here in West Tennessee will be fun.  I'll be back to Picwick in the next few weeks and my wife is looking for a place for us and the dogs at Kentucky Lake too.

My last couple of times out fishing a small lake I caught all mine in a shallow cove with the water pretty much muddy using a spinnerbait with a bigger colorado blade and on both the Strike King 1XS and the Bandit Footloose. All of them were right around 1-2# including the ones that managed to get off due to my own fault.

So far everything has been in less than 3 ft of water

    All of my fish have came off this one creek channel ledge in 12-15 FOW on a Carolina rig.

5-12 feet of water, points. Shallows always produce but no oinks. Plastics still effective but taking backseat to cranks (baby bass/craw) and spins (for me anyway).

As a matter of fact, the fishing has been surprisingly good these past couple of weeks considering the water temps are 87-88 degrees. Ponds and small lakes here in my area of Florida are almost always good for 4-6 fish, if not more. I'm heading out to one of my favorite local ponds tomorrow morning, I'm anticipating a minimum 6-8 fish between 6am and 10am. I head to the house after about 10am, gets hot as hell by then.

Living in Florida, I pretty much catch all my fish at all times of the year in shallow water because that's pretty much all I fish.  It's more a question of if they're hitting worms, spinnerbaits, jigs, or topwater.

in the hallows, 1-3 fet around cover.

I agree this has been a very bad year, weather wise. Here in MA, we didn't even start to get the water temps above 70 degrees until 3 weeks ago! Now it's back down into the low 70's again! Tell me that's not to put a crimp in anyone's action!

Hey muddy - Knowing how to read your sonar is not going to help much with this crazy summer we've just had! For instance, I take several screen shots of the depths I fish every trip. So I can go back and learn something for the next outing. Here's some samples:

We spent the day yesterday (SM fishing) working these depths and a lot more. Found bait everywhere on great structures. But the fish had lockjaw. When we hit the first spot (35') at 6:40 am, we hammered them. Only 45 min. later, they shut down. Didn't matter where or how deep you fished....or what you used. We caught nothing after the sun burned through the heavy fog.

In this case, I believe it was a "light" situation. Maybe due to heavy pressure. Not sure. It did pay off, being there early, with about 1/2 dozen decent smallies caught & released. But the action didn't last long.

If you want some tips on setting up your sonar, don't hesitate to let me know. I've been fishing off-shore structures for smallies a lot over the past 1/2 dozen years or more.

Been a rough year here too.  The weather has been unusually cool and the biting has slowed to a crawl.  Last weekend though it lit up.  The bass seem to be heading into a fall pattern.  My favorite time of year for catching bass.  They are feeding like crazy and the coold nights bring them back.  Went out sunday witha buddy and caught 12 bass only one of which was less than 14 inches.  Largest was 22 inches and just a touch under 6lbs.  They were hitting the shallow weeds and the light cover of the pads.  Soft plastics rigged to just go across the top of the cover and it was on.  

Did I mention I love fall bass the best.  

d**n, they are hitting nothing like that around here...still slow as hell for 2 weeks or more now... end up having to pitch jig the cover to get anything. and even that is nothing big at all. usually not even keepers. im sure they are deep but every time i try that, its a big disapointment and 0 fish.i keep tryin though,just never clicks

Lately here with the cold front our fish are buried DEEP in the reeds. I mean to the point where you have to blast a jig inside and bonk one on the head to get it to bite.

It is a dinkfest in the open water though.... :-/

My only success is in the shallow water under the dam of lake. I cannot catch anything in big water. I have no boat so shallow water enables me to wade fishing

I agree this has been a very bad year, weather wise. Here in MA, we didn't even start to get the water temps above 70 degrees until 3 weeks ago! Now it's back down into the low 70's again! Tell me that's not to put a crimp in anyone's action!

Hey muddy - Knowing how to read your sonar is not going to help much with this crazy summer we've just had! For instance, I take several screen shots of the depths I fish every trip. So I can go back and learn something for the next outing. Here's some samples:

We spent the day yesterday (SM fishing) working these depths and a lot more. Found bait everywhere on great structures. But the fish had lockjaw. When we hit the first spot (35') at 6:40 am, we hammered them. Only 45 min. later, they shut down. Didn't matter where or how deep you fished....or what you used. We caught nothing after the sun burned through the heavy fog.

In this case, I believe it was a "light" situation. Maybe due to heavy pressure. Not sure. It did pay off, being there early, with about 1/2 dozen decent smallies caught & released. But the action didn't last long.

If you want some tips on setting up your sonar, don't hesitate to let me know. I've been fishing off-shore structures for smallies a lot over the past 1/2 dozen years or more.  

Can you explain to me what you see from each sonar shot? I usually rent my boats so all I do is beat the banks. I rarely fish in open water, but am looking to buy my first boat soon. Hopefully I can learn from deep water skills.

I am also rather new to reading sonar and would appreciate it. If anybody has time, could you post some screen shots and explain what you see? You can start a new thread if you didn't want to hijack this one. I am sure Trippyjai would appreciate it as much as I will.

Thats a lot of arches on the weed tops on that hump, in the second pic

That's not a hump. It's a ball of bait (mainly small perch and smelt) with the fish on top of it. The bottom structures I fish are shelves and drop offs with about 1' of mossy weeds on the bottom. I anchor on these structures and let the bait balls - and bass - come to me. Works like a charm. BTW, the second one is where we killed 'em at first light.

TrippyJai - As said in the previous post, what I'm showing are balls of bait at various depths. How you know they are bait balls is by two ways. First of all, I'm anchored. So, when that mass of bait comes rolling in, you know the bottom content hasn't grown like that! Besides, the sonar doesn't shoot through masses of rock (which most off-shore structure is composed of - around here anyway). Secondly, I've used an Aqua View on several occasions to verify the type of bait I'm looking at. I've had enough experience to know which is what, by looking at the screen.

26.3' - Decent size ball of perch. (They were pecking our DS baits to death!) The leading edge shows some minor arches. Probably small bass or larger perch. A smallie will show as a heavy straight line, when you're anchored like I am. The top of the screen is signal clutter and is to be ignored. BTW....the verticle line is my drop shot line.

34.7' - Another ball of bait on the bottom coming through. This one is mixed with bass on top of the screen and some just coming in behind it on the right of the screen. A few fish coming through at about 15' - 20'. These are either rainbows or salmon - again, I ignore these, unless I'm getting desperate!

42.1' - A single ball of bait which stayed under us. It drifted back & forth under us, which is why you see the same sized ball on several locations in a single screen shot. And again, the vertical line is my drop shot. We did not catch anything here however. If you notice, no really decent fish are shown either. But fishing a bait ball like this is always worth a shot. Sometimes the biggest bass of the day will come here!

Hope this was of some help to you.

My old reliable spots are paying off on a regular basis.  It's so much shallow or deep, it's more that the spots that have been working in the past are producing steadily.    

It's been so reliable at times that I can go to a lake and fish around a little then say "it's time to get one" and go to a particular spot and bang! fish on.

Isn't always like this but right now it's let the good times roll.