BassAngl9r

I’ll be visiting Florida in a few months and bringing my bass rods to do some freshwater fishing while there, but I also wanted to try saltwater fishing for the first time. What would give me the best chance of catching fish from the shore/pier? Do I just drop my lure straight down and wait or should I cast out from the pier? And can I use my bass rods whenever I’m fishing saltwater? Thanks for any advice you guys have

This was very insightful, thank you! I’ll be doing some careful scouting of the bank when I revisit one of these bodies of water tomorrow and the photos you posted should be helpful for reference.

To start I’m a relatively new angler (about 1 year of experience) so it could be completely my fault, but I can’t seem to catch any bass, maybe one if I’m lucky, once I move to a large pond/lake. I have a small pond in my neighborhood that I can catch multiple fish a day on multiple different lures. In the past week I’ve gone to two different “lakes” (honestly just oversized ponds) each for atleast 3 hours and one caught one fish between the two. I mainly go early morning and start with a walking bait or whopper plopper, lipless crankbait, and Texas rig tied on. I usually walk the entire bank throwing topwater down the bank followed by Texas rig and then fan out cast towards the middle of the water with my lipless. Any info on how to improve will be greatly appreciated More Info on ponds I went to this week: no real coves or points, minimal structure above water and since I’m bank fishing not sure about underwater, I also noticed a lot of big fish swimming away from the bank as I walked past but when I bring my lure past them they also just swim away so think they might be carp (I’ve heard carp can ruin bass lakes but idk if that’s true) but that might be me making excuses. sorry that this was a lot I’m just getting frustrated that I fish almost daily and can only catch fish from small ponds