Interesting, this little lake I fish might have something similar going on in miniature. There’s the open, sort of barren water bass that school up and rove around the lake after Shad or maybe tilapia and there’s the shoreline structure huggers. I kind of thought and may still think it might be seasonal and the fish are one in the same, but I’m not sure about that. Is that definitive enough for you? The rovers seem to be active in the fall, but I saw some in the summer, too. The shoreline huggers seem to be doing that ambuscade hunting when it’s warm and then ease down a little deeper in the cold, but I think they are still hovering around hard structure.Cuervo Jones wrote:They’re 3-d lurkers, using weeds and logs and branches and reeds. Depth is their friend, but they’re not shy about lurking in inches of water, waiting to inhale a mouse off the surface or rocket forward to crunch a bluegill. In the lakes I fish, there’s 2 populations of bass: the shad-stalkers of the deeper water and the bluegill-chompers of the shallows. My experience is that the shallower fish are more solitary while the deeper fish are more schooling. I’ve caught 6 lbs+ fish in both shallow and deep water, so I’m not sure if there’s any difference in big fish potential. That’s why I usually start by checking the shallows before moving deep. They can be absolutely anywhere man!
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Once in a while, a small school of bass will come hustling right up against the bank almost exactly like a school of redfish. My daughter spied this first and I kind of thought she was putting me on, but then I saw it first hand. And they were a mix of sizes, but a couple looked north of 5 pounds. I grabbed her spinner rigged with a small jig, but got no love. There’s some big ones in this lake. She had a monster take a big live tilapia fished out deep, but it never got hooked and spit out the tilapia at the dock.
I just put some sink tip line on a reel and the next step is to tie up some big yak hair sunfish/tilapia baitfish. Tilting at windmills, this I know.