well trey, i guess my suggestion would be this. when you fish the deep water, cover the entire water column. for some reason, a lot of fishermen make the mistake of bottom fishin' only when they fish deeper water. yeah, you wanna make sure you cover that, BUT do not forget the rest of the water column. just because the water is 30 feet deep don't mean the fish are 30 feet deep. fishing below the fish in 10 ft or less is not that big a deal as they can usually see your bait anyway. if you are fishin' below 'em in 30 ft. of water, you might not even be in the game. divide the water column into thirds. use baits that will thoroughly cover the top third (0-10ft) (including topwater believe it or not), the middle third (10-20 ft) and the bottom third (20-30 ft). i'm just using 30 ft as an example here, but this strategy will work in a variety of water depth. by doing this, if the fish are feeding, you will eliminate options and eventually find not only a bait that they like, but more importantly the depth they are using. you can fine tune from there. since visibility is less in deeper water, i tend to use bigger baits and/or baits fish can locate by noise or vibration also.
since you are using this as a strategy to catch big fish, you will have to be patient. the cali guys on here will tell ya that a lot of times, it's a waiting game with big fish. if you have confidence that an area holds big fish (deep or shallow) sometimes you have no choice but to wait until they decide to eat. hope this helps buddy and best of luck to ya in your never-ending quest for the bigguns this year.
