Local Lake Tournament. Need Some Pointers

[Rolltide09]

My local lake host a tournament ever week. The lake is known to be hard to fish and catch quality bass out of. On any given tournament, if you have close to 10lbs you stand a good chance of winning the purse. Which is not bad considering they average 15-20 boats and $30 per fisherman. On to some information regarding this lake. The lake is a moderately clear water lake and is renowned locally as being so hard to fish that most drive over an hour for better fishing. In most places from the banks out to 14ft deep you cant really fish bottom due to all the vegetation. Only ways I have found to consistently produce for me is use either a t-rigged weightless plastic like a senko, finesse or trick worm, a ribbit frog, and hollow body frogs and get into the cover as far as I can and fish the mats and small holes within them. My problem comes to only being able to catch bass up to 2lbs. Occasionally we will tag on to a 3lber or so but not often enough to make claims. I have heard on some of the guy hitting the channels up and doing ok but I am not to knowledgeable on fishing 20-40ft deep channels and prefer the nastier cover personally. Any advice or tips? Would like to better my skill level and contend with some of these guys that fish this place religiously.

[FD.]

T-rig a fluke weightless or with 1/16 oz and fish it in the heavy deeper vegetation.

[bartdude186]

i second the fluke, i fish a lake that sounds a lot like yours. if im fishing there 90% of the time its a weightless super fluke bc of the vegetation. if i go after bigger fish i switch to a magnum fluke with a nail weight and fish the weed line in about 10ft of water, thats what the fish in my avatar pic was caught on in that lake as well.

[CDMeyer]

You could use a jig, but since you have had good catches t-rigging, I would t-rig a lizard or a fluke maybe even a tube bait..... and just drag them across the bottom in the channel

I would also try and find where the channel has it's biggest drop or a spot that has rock on the bottom and use a crank bait there

[BrianinMD]

Try a drop shot along the weed edge, and on non-tourney days get away from your comfort zone.