Hmmmm... Worth a shot, always. In fact, I'll share a quick story. I was invited to fish a pond. Got there and it turned out to be tiny -I mean I could throw a rock across with ease. The owner told me he'd put five bass in it the previous year. I was there so I walked back to it, and counted four 12-14inch bass in the shallows. There was a deep dark pocket at one end however, where I couldn't see bottom. I made a single cast with a grub and found the fifth bass, an 18-incher.
I looked at satellite images of your ponds (from your profile) and found this little pond. Maybe this is where you are headed. The whereabouts of the bass is pretty obvious, and reachable, here. Great laboratory to test and hone your approach and presentation skills.
All that said, unless the habitat is extremely limited -as in the tiny pond in my story- it may be most important to find the best concentrations of bluegills, even on a small pond. I'll touch on this below.
Rarely are there no fish on the shoreline in our small waters here. They're just too small for the shorelines to be entirely ignored by bass. But not all shorelines -even most, by mid-Summer. It's not the shoreline exactly but what shorelines provide, and that's complex cover which promotes the food chain. The worst circumstance might be flat tapering shorelines that exclude fish the size of mature bass, and with little substantial cover. This is nursery water that supports YOY fishes and yearling predators. If much of this exists in your waters, you'll want to find steeper shorelines that offer at least 18" of depth right at the bank. I know a pond that has slow shallow tapered shorelines all the way around except one 100ft stretch of bank bounded by willows where wave erosion has cut the bank. That's a place bass can pin bluegills right against that bank. And they do! It's a great spot. It also helps that there is some small wood (hard cover) -just willow stumps and snags- mixed in with the veges in there too.
The other part I think can be the heat and sun. Tough to separate the two in terms of effect on behavior but I think heat plays a role from some things I've seen. Regardless, the bass just seem to disappear under high heat and sun. Usually the two come together, esp here in CO with our 5000ft elevation "thin" air in which heating (and cooling) of the air are rapid. The bass must bury into cover, or drop closer to bottom, making shoreline and upper water column fishing pretty much dead.
You'd asked about the topwaters in waist deep water. In my experience, I've found bass unwilling to approach the surface under such bright hot conditions. I think they are too concerned about aerial predators (and the list of them on our CO waters is long), and that the heat/prey vulnerability ratio is not conducive to aggressive hunting activity. These are my best educated guesses at explaining why under such conditions I have all too often wound up “beating a dead horse”. Basically, it seems they won’t move. They won’t chase. They won’t come up 2ft (!) to take a topwater, spinnerbait or swim jig.
What to do?
-Head for deeper water. Mature bass appreciate deeper water and expanses of it. So a lot of bass wind up away from shore in summer as you suspect. But not all bluegills do so not all bass do. There are almost always shoreline areas that attract bass. If hoof’n, look for reachable deeper water, or get a float tube! I saw a good one at a used sporting goods place here for $50. I have also done well trolling a shallow crankbait through main basins. Hit a fish then stop and cast. Summer bass are rarely alone. Just got to find them. I’ve done this from a float tube and from shore if shoreline that will allow it.
-Pray for rain. That is, fish under the darkest coolest conditions if possible. Timing is always key, but especially so in Summer, as papajoe222 wrote about above. (He’s someone to follow, btw.)
-Hit dense overhead cover areas. These may or may not be near deep water. (Cover and food can trump everything.) The more complex the cover (wood, rock, depth changes, substrate changes, vegetation changes) the more attractive it will be to bass. Complex cover promotes diversity and surface area for food chain development, creating micro-habitat space for a variety of critters. It also gives bass tactical advantage on hard to catch prey (bluegills) and room to chase. I say “overhead” cover bc solid dense weeds, although may allow bass to sleep, does not provide the best hunting. They need space to move underneath. Dense veggies may or may not be canopied -have a mat on top with some open water beneath. So do some exploring and be choosy about where you spend your time in dense cover.
-One important thing I do -before I start flinging lures- is to actively look for concentrations of bluegills. I talk about this a bit in my video “Crankbaits for Fall Bass Fishing in Milfoil”. The bass are where the bluegills are. This almost always pans out. Several spots may look alike, but only one has bluegills, and bass.
You’d PM’d me about lures and I’ll respond here (I hope that’s OK) as I don’t have any secrets. I use two presentation types: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal asks bass to chase. Vertical stays in place and catches (or tempts) the non-chasers.
If I have a standard GoTo horizontal bait on our weedy waters it’s a swim jig. You’ll see them in many of my vids and I talk about them a bit in my upcoming Late Summer video -uploaded next week I think. I also like crank baits (also in the Late Summer vid) and in Summer, especially, triggering is important, such as crashing and ripping off cover. Spinnerbaits are great bass catchers. I always said, give a kid a spinnerbait and you’d better teach him some good conservation ethics along with it. Many other great baits too… Pick some and learn how to get the bass to bite them.
For vertical presentations I tend to use soft plastics, although jigs (killed, shaken,..) are good, and lipless cranks can be fished somewhat vertical (from a boat) when ripping weed edges. I like two soft plastics the most bc they spell FOOD to bass and are unobtrusive and not off-putting. They are stick-worms (Senko types) and smallish slim straight-tail worms. They can be T-rigged, drop-shotted, or jig-wormed (“Shaky”). Another good option is the Ned Rig, which is more horizontal but can work well anyway as it's subtle and unobtrusive
Then there's topwaters which tend to work best under dark, light-attenuating conditions. An exception can be weedless "frogs" over dense canopied vegetation. Buzzbaits and wind rippled surfaces go together like...PB&J...in my mind.
Summer tackle, since we’re talking lures: With vegetation up you’ll need some power. I shift up to 12 to 20lb lines by midsummer. I also have a finesse rig handy for bright sun. I use 8lb unless there are more veges, (esp Chara), when I go to 10lb. Although in ultra-clear water with little cover I may use 6lb or even 4lb.
Hope this helps. This is some of what I do, and it’s always interesting to talk with other fishers to see what they’ve come up with. Let me know how you make out.
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