I was in a very similar situation to the original poster. Moved to South FL after living in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic most of my life. Most times, I don't use live bait, but I do love a day on the water running through shiners. Having said that, I have very often struggled with finding bass in the shallow water and heavy cover in most of my local waters. Early morning is an absolute blast, but once that 10-11am grind starts, I've just trained myself to chuck and drag a worm for a bit and if nothing's happening, I head home (then probably do some bank fishing in the evening :)). My local waters (mainly Everglades) are very shallow (1-4 feet) outside of the canals, I have just never had any success flipping even into the heaviest cover that shallow, but for some reason I keep trying!
