Don't get discouraged, there is some good fishing in these ponds. I keep my trips short, about an hour at any given place...and it's not uncommon for me to have little runs where I might have 3-4 of those trips in a row where I get skunked, or don't catch anything meaningful, but then, I'm gonna hit a little good stretch and start catching a few nice ones, and it all evens out. KVD just caught 2 or 3 keepers in 2 days in the classic...think about that! The best tourney fisherman in history just basically got skunked for 16 hours, when some guys were catching 20 lb sacks, Evers caught 30 on the last day. If you look at the bottom of the leaderboards on the BASS tourneys, there are a few guys getting skunked everywhere they go, it's just part of fishing. If I look at my 1 hour trips, I'll fish 8 separate places in that typical "tourney day" time period. So what if 4 of them are blanks, as long as I catch a few on the other 4 trips I'd still have a decent "best 5" fish over the 8 hours!
If you want to throw the Spinnerbaits and Cranks, your best bet is going to be fishing in the ponds with some stained water. Look at the water color in Grove, that is what you want for those baits. Nashoba and Halle are going to be clearer, so a lot of times finesse will serve you better in that environment. Just think of that as a starting point, you want to try and work the odds in your favor as much as you can Always look at the water color first wherever you are fishing, that will put you on the right path.
Now, without going into seasonal patterns or exceptional situations like current or crazy weather, the other big factors that will invite the reaction baits are some wind, and some low light conditions, whether that be from darkness or cloud cover. In other words, even with the stained water, if you're fishing a bright day with no wind at Grove, you will likely wind up downsizing baits and slowing down. The trick is in knowing where to soak those baits, which brings us to....
A great way to start learning the ponds is to take a couple of crankbaits that you know the running depth for. Start with a Squarebill that will run about 4' deep, and maybe a Bandit 200 that will run around 8' deep...then you just make a lap all the way around a pond. Don't use a lipless or a sinking bait like a Spinnerbait for this, you want a bait with a consistent running depth. You can take the hooks off of it if you are afraid of losing the bait. All you are doing here is mapping out the bottom, and this is the fastest way I know how to do it from the bank. The crankbaits will tell you where the drop-offs are, they will tell you where there is grass, where there are rocks, where the bottom is firm or soft, etc. If you start at a new pond and run around it like that a time or two, you will be well ahead of the curve and you will learn things that you can use to your advantage in the future there. You can eliminate some ponds, and you can also find others that suit your strengths once you know something about the contours or the lack thereof!
Lastly, if you don't keep a fishing journal, I strongly advise you to start. Especially when you are learning new water. If you start keeping detailed notes, it gives you something to refer back to periodically so you don't forget what you have already worked hard to learn, and also, maybe even more importantly, keeping a journal will start to make you run down a mental checklist during your trips, and after a while you will be thinking through the current conditions and making faster adjustments in real time. Take about 5 minutes and make some notes each time you go, and make yourself a little checklist so you are keeping consistent notes. I use a homemade spreadsheet but there are some pre-made examples you can find with Google.
Get a thermometer and log the surface temp in your journal each time you go. This is so simple, but nobody does it while bank fishing. Think about it, if you know the water temp and what lures worked or didn't, especially in a transitional period like right now-winter to pre-spawn to spawn to post-spawn, you can use that info for the rest of your life!
Start fishing as many ponds as you can find, don't get stuck in a rut at one place. If you can go fishing 2 days a week for 2-3 hours per trip, you can loop 2 ponds per trip (1 hour each-you will concentrate harder if you keep it short) and you will start increasing your options pretty quickly. If you start hitting 2-4 new ponds per week you'll have covered most of what is available nearby in a short time, then you can start to fine tune. You'll find some you like and some you don't, but you should learn something at every new one you go to. Forcing yourself to deal with a lot of "new water" fishing situations is the fastest way to get good at breaking down "new water" situations, it will keep you thinking about the conditions instead of falling into a rut.
I can go to Grove 10x in a row and fish an hour per trip, and expect to catch something like 4-6 bass over 4 lbs during that period by doing the same things that have worked for me in the past (fishing history),
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I can fish 10 different ponds for an hour each and face different situations each time, and maybe only catch 2-4 over 4 lbs out of the lot, but I'll have found 2-4 new places to fish that I now know have decent bass in them, and I definitely learned something about reading new water and reacting to conditions in the process. And I probably eliminated a couple of other ponds off of my list too, so I don't have to wonder about them any longer.
This might sound like a lot, but it really isn't hard to do any of this stuff. If you do all of this, you'll still get skunked some of the time....but I bet you'll start getting more consistent too.
I'm handing out some pearls here guys, I hope some of y'all are listening
