Need Help With Fishing Shallow Ponds

[TheBassinBarber]

I live in DE, and most of our waters around here are very shallow, most of them 5-6 ft deep on average, with your occasional 8 ft hole.  I know with large lakes and rivers where you get vast differences in depths it can be easier to put yourself on fish, but what things would you guys look for when your fishfinder is only good for temp and reading structure since the water is so shallow. BTW, I am new to fishfinders so I am learning how to read them properly.  For instance, I am going to be fishing a pond on tuesday that has a max depth of 4 ft and is about 80 acres in size.  you can walk the whole pond basically. There is not much change in structure at all.  However, this place has an overabundance of lily pads in the warmer months.  I have done well here the couple times I have fished this place, but there really has not been any method to my madness, just luck I guess.  I have tried to match where I caught my fish to a topo map, but the topo's of these ponds here leave a lot to be desired and really dont help show me why I may have caught fish there instead of another spot.  I hope someone can help spread a little light on the subject for me.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Marty]

I have fished a number of shallow ponds, weedy with maximum depth of less than 10'. It may just be me, but with a few exceptions, I haven't found reasonably reliable spots. So in the absence of that kind of information, I just try and cover as much water as possible, picking up a fish here and there, and on some days, finding a concentration where I'd least expect one and never again finding a concentration in that same spot.

[TheBassinBarber]

Thanks!

[Tuckahoe Joe]

Sounds like most of the lakes that I fish.  Im like 30 minutes from the Maryland Deleware line so they're probably pretty similar.  Im always fishing from the shore so I don't really know about fish finders and all that.  If it is only 4 ft deep, the water temp shouldn't fluxuate too much between the deep points and the shallows.  If you can't find any offshore stucture, try some of the shoreline cover.  Im not sure what you should throw Tuesday but when it warms up and the bass get more active, I'd be throwing squarebills at every bit of shoreline cover I can find.  Keep in mind that Im still fairly new to bass fishing so take all this with a grain of salt.  Just my thoughts.

[NEjitterbugger]

Bass fishing in shallow water is my favorite... Don't be fooled just by the cover you can see on top of the water, an advantage of fishing a relatively shallow place is that you can see the bottom or make out some structure from the bottom. My favorite way to target bass like this is with topwater(hard and soft), soft on pads and in grassy muck, hard around the cover... Like I was saying about cover under the water like rocks, submerged vegetation, logs, etc. I either use topwater, texas rigged worm(weighted or not) , crankbait depending on the depth...

 

If it is a small pond/lake I usually go ahead and fish the entire shore line before doing anything else... Hope something helped....

 

And the photo in my profile pic was caught in less than 6ft of water

[TheBassinBarber]

thanks for the advice everyone

[tommiller76]

I live in south Jersey and my best fishing spot is a pond no bigger than half an acre at most and averages about 5-6' at its deepest. My local pond too has many large patches of pads from late spring through late fall or early winter. For a while a I would drag a little heavier jig than I would normally throw for the depths of the pond but when doing so it actually wasn't in an attempt to catch fish but more of a way of mentally mapping the bottom. By dragging the jig you can then map areas that change from hard to soft or from a rougher area of bottom to an area of grass or piles of leaves. Another thing I did was bought a good pair of waders and walked just about every inch of open water available to me and sort of mapped the bottom in combination with the jig. Being such a small pond I couldn't find any sort of map for it so I basically drew one on my own. I drew the basic outline of the pond and just laminated it so that it was water proof [to a degree] and used a grease pencil to mark any sort of irregularity, bottom change, different angles of points or slopes or any thing else you may come across on the map. once I had a pretty good understanding of the bottom contour of the pond I transferred all the information to another map that I drew. Last year the pond here had a dramatic drop in water level which made for tough fishing but allowed me to get out and actually compare my map the actual floor of the pond and if I may say so myself my feet, jig and drawing skills worked well in allowing me to know just what was under the surface of the water. I hope this helps and good fishing...!

[aavery2]

Because standard 2D fish finders use depth to increase area of coverage they are very limited in shallow water.  This is where SI fish finders realy shine, you can see as far as a couple hundred feet in both directions regardless of depth.   In shallow waters the fish will often cling tight to structure and cover, anything they can find.   Side imageing fish finders make it possible to find these areas much quicker that older 2D type sonar.

 

In short, find the structure, and you will find fish.

[HeavyDluxe]

I grew up in DE, now living in VT.  In both places, I primarily fished small ponds like you indicate, though up here they seem to have more depth and (obviously) generally are far cooler even in the peak of summer than the waters there.

 

My only productive addition would be to find the food... Walk around and try to find spots where smaller fish that would be food for predators are hanging out.  Then, look for areas of cover, shade, or depth change close to that food source.  Target those features.

[TheBassinBarber]

Good stuff fellas..def great advice I am going out tuesday and try to put it all in play