Baitfish everywhere!!!

[piranha]

I fished a new lake today and found a spot, that I targeted due to my observations of the sun, wind, etc, that had thousands upon thousands of baitfish, baby bass and baby sunnies. I have never seen anything like it. It was middle of the day and there wasn't a bass breaking the water in the area so I primarily used a senko in and around the shady areas. I caught one bass nearby that did break the water, but didn't get a hit otherwise, that I was aware of.

My question is, when you come upon a situation like that, should you stay there figuring that bass must be nearby because it has food, cover, etc, even though the bass aren't hitting? Would you stay and keep working the area with different lures and approaches, or move to other parts of the lake that don't seem to have the "ideal mix" that you are seeking? I ultimately moved with no success elsewhere either.

Maybe the bass were just full from gorging on all the fish!  

[Muddpuppy]

They were probably feeding on the edges of the schools I am sure I would have tried several different lures spinnerbait, rat- l- trap ect, tried to use baits that matched the fish.

I have seen them where they will swim around a bait durring the day in open shallow water, tried one after anouther and they could care less. I like to try to find some kind of structure durring the day that they can get against that also offers them some shade. It doesnt always have to be much, and sometime hard to detect. If there is a creek comeing into the lake the channel on it offers a good place, if there is grass growing close or along it it's even better, not to mention if the water is moveing it should be cooler. A fallen tree is a good place, and over hanging limbs that offer shade are great. I don't think I really answered the ? getting alittle tired. Have you tried reading any of the articles on here? Some of them have some really good information in them. Since you get online late at nite that may be a good place to look until you get some more repleys. Look at the top of the page in the green bar click- fishing articles. The beginning section is a good place to start even if you have fished for years. I'll try to do better next time.

Look for changes in plant life this sometimes indicates a structure change on the bottom.  There maybe a hump or hole.

[Will]

If you run a bigger spinnerbait through the shad then the shad will get stirred triggering the bass to start feeding. I did this at a tournament when their were thousands of shad so we would stir them up, once they got stirred up bass would start busting and any kind of topwater caught the bass.

[Chris]

I have a lake that I have a tournament on tomorrow thats kinda like that. It is loaded with shad. I mean you see pods of shad everywhere you go in the lake, river, shallow, deep, everywhere. For my tournament I am fishing places where bass come to feed ambush points. Any place that bottlenecks the shad. In the lake I am fishing flats and a island that has timber all over it. Ontop of the flooded island is about 2-3ft deep and drops off into 12 ft deep. At night the shad move up in the timber and the bass move up with them. Around midmorning the shad move off of the flats and out to open water. The bass move off and suspend or follow the shad. They migrate following the breakline all the way to the river. In the river I target bends in the river channel. I look for places where the channel swings close to the bank. I target points, and places where flats dump out to the channel. Sometimes you will see little openings that open up to the flat.  Fish the little openings because its a bottleneck the funnels baitfish and bass will be there.

[George Welcome]

another good try: run a rattle trap through them. You might find the bass are feeding voraciously somewhere in the column other than the surface.