High Vis Lake help

[Koop]

I fished with a friend Monday afternoon at a lake neither of us had fished before.  This lake had GREAT cover and structure.  First lake I have seen in WI with a 200+ acre reed bed with thick reeds and tree stumps growing out of the water.  The water in that entire area was about 4-5 ft.  The rest of the lake was very rocky bottom with very thick vegetation on the bottom only.  This lake had probably... 15+ feet of visibility.  I have NEVER fished a lake so clear.  Geneva comes close but this lake was insane.   We fished the reeds and tree stumps for about 20 minutes just because it looked so picture perfect.  We then decided there was no way fish were in their with blue bird  skies and 15+ feet of vis.  We went out to about 20-25fow and started drop shotting and throwing c-rigs.  I ended up catching 2 in the 2# range and my buddy was skunked after about 4 hours of fishing.  There was no real deep structure for fish to hold on that we could find.  We did finally come across a series of small hills or humps in about 20 fow and were marking fish there, that is where the 2 came from but we could never get on top of them very well.

This lake has definitely enticed be and challenged me, I will definitely be coming back to those reed beds and trees in the fall.  

We did have a lake map but all it showed was 1 bar that had about 8 boats sitting on it fishing for walleye and gills.  We opted not to join that gaggle.   The rest of it was just a gradual decline to 35-40 fow in the deepest areas.

Looking for advice on anything I may have overlooked or how I should have approached this?  

I was just in utter shock by the visibility on this lake and dont fish lakes like this very often, want to be prepared with a better idea next time.

[CWB]

I would have spent more time in the reeds, clear skies or not.

Was there a deep weededge or an inside weededge. Any docks or moored boats, rafts etc. You'll be experiencing some clearwater fishing in a couple weeks and although alot of people automatically think deep, that could be a big mistake. I routinely see monsters cruising the shorelines in a couple feet of water, some are just catching rays, others are feeding. Docks, boats and reeds, stumps etc. make shade which will hold bait and in turn hold bass shallow in the clearest water.

[Koop]

Sadly there was only 1 set of docks on this lake.  All the lakeside property was across a street, and the boats were on elevated docks all along 1 side (maybe about 20 yards worth of dock holding boats).  We actually fished this very hard when we first got there.  There was only a deep weedline, nothing shallow.  All of the shallow veg was stuck to the bottom like a solid matt that was about 3-4" thick.  There were no weeds in the reeds either, your right we probably should have fished the reeds harder.

[CWB]

In reeds like that, I learned from watching an old In-Fisherman show that you need to fire your bait horizontally into the cover so your line does not lay over the tops of the reeds, but goes straight through them making for a retrieve where your bait stays in the water, not hopping in and out as you pull it over the reed tops. Good baits are Rage Shads of course, frogs but with this big an area I would choose a faster moving bait, and spinnerbaits and even buzzbaits. The key is a good hard sidearm cast straight into the stuff so your bait works out through the reeds, not over them. You'd be surprised how many fish are actually using this kind of cover if its the only shallow cover around. I cried when about 5 years ago a few homeowners on my lake killed off the only major reedbed on the lake. Always held fish. Great cover in spring also as reeds require a harder bottom to grow in and that means good spawning area for bass.