I am curious what everyone's approach, more or less what tackle they would be fishing in a small local bass tournament I am fishing again in a few weeks.
The water: About 42 acres that is very shallow. Probably averages 4'. The deepest spot is about 8 feet but that is a teeny area maybe 100 feet by 100 feet. Deep holes are about 6 feet. It is extremely weedy, has mostly grass that grows a few inches from the surface with some milfoil and a few other grasses mixed in...no real lily pads, just some sparse areas of pond weed. The bottom is super soft and silty. Basically this is a glorified swamp IMO.
The fish: Perch, Pickerel, sunfish, bluegill, bullheads and Crappie. There are some decent large mouth in here despite being so shallow. The largemouth are very dark probably from living in the grass and having the sun beating on them all the time.
Fishing is for 4 hours in a few weeks, 8am until 12. So this is the 3rd year I am fishing in it, and it's a lot of fun regardless with the past years having about 30 entrants. You can use electric motors if you want but I usually just take my kayak out and paddle along because it's not too big and I don't have to worry about getting tangled in weeds all the time. They weigh all the fish as we go and take your biggest 5. The problem is the last 2 years no one has caught 5 fish. Last year out of 30 people only 4 fish were caught in the cold October rains, that's why it's in September this year so we expect probably 40 anglers. I won with 2 fish at about 3 pounds last year and 3 fish at 5 pounds the previous year.
I fished here about a month ago and caught 14 fish in 4 hours with the 5 biggest being in the 14 pound neighborhood. These were all caught on 12 different baits. I went last week and caught a total of 0 bass...I lost 4 nice ones because they were just not committing and short striking everything.
In previous years I see everyone typically using topwater baits - a lot of frogs and a lot of buzz baits. Attacking this isn't a lot of fun.
With all the grass and weeds dying off now fishing anything moving is tons of fun. You spend more time cleaning off lures than actually fishing.
My plan of attack is usually start off with spinnerbaits to cover water and get those reaction bites which is usually pretty effective. I stay away from buzzbaits because they just wrap grass up so bad it's frustrating plus they see them from everyone else. I pull texas rigs through the grass but they don't seem to be too effective despite throwing rattles in there and beads. Weightless tex-posed worms tend to be ok but they haven't produced tons of bites. I have a fair amount of success fishing weedless flukes but they tend to attract more pickerel than anything and that results in a lot of bite-offs.
I have gone about flipping and punching jigs and heavy beaver style bites down into the weeds but the bite is very slow and you clean off a lot of weeds/muck. Plus they bury right down in the muck. Swim jigs have been very ineffective and seem to do worse for me than anything.
What am I missing here? Should I be flipping a power shot rig perhaps to get the baits into the thick of things but off the bottom? The weeds are very interesting, they are soooooo thick but there is almost nothing on the surface for about 4-6 inches except for all the strands of grass sticking up that grab everything. Anything with a treble hook is put of the picture except for a small little 50 foot by 50 foot hole that never seems to hold any fish (nothing ever shows up on my graphs).
Thanks for any suggestions.
