bass talk

[nate01]

I'd love to figure this out too. I fish for smallies pretty religiously during summer with soft plastics and topwaters. Last weekend on the Delaware (I.e. 9 days ago) we crushed smallies on those baits after the water temps came up 7 degrees in 4 days. Wanted to use bait with two youngsters on the boat (both of whom got their first bass and many more) but oddly enough medium shiners only caught one fish. By this weekend that just passed water temps had come back down and the same plastic and topwater baits didn't work nearly as well. We still caught fish but they were tentative and not aggressive at all, playing with the plastics instead of engulfing them which resulted in many many missed fish. Only one on topwaters also. And search baits don't seem to be the answer for me at least.