Fished Ray Roberts this afternoon and got into them pretty good (all small)throwing a white bandit crank bait on a rocky shoreline. Thought if I kept going with it I'd eventually catch some size, but it never happened. I found a pattern, my question is if the smaller fish were eating that bait what could I have done to replicate that to catch bigger fish?

This time of year...cover more ground, find like water, replicate your pattern.

Bigger fish are close by. They are letting the schooling smaller fish do their dirty work for them. They are taking the dead and injured. What I have found that the bigger fish are interested in is how the other species are relating to the Shad. Other species are working the Shad just as hard as the small Bass. Big fish will key in on this. Other bait fish that are acting out of the ordinary are much more interesting to big fish than the Shad pattern. The larger Bass just do not like these species darting in and out on the schools of Shad. This crazy action causes them to key in on the unnatural display that is taking place. The larger Bass will swoop in and take out a Blue Gill, Yellow Perch or Sand Bass that are feeding radically. Pattern these other species for the larger Bass.

Thanks for the responses. To your point Donald if the smaller fish were keying on whatever type/color moving bait. I might have caught the bigger fish with say a weightless fluke or soft jerk bait in the same? Or possibly a deeper diving crank bait in a bream color?

Exactly. Another good bait to mimic the Pray Fish is the Blade Jig (chatterbait). Fished with an erratic action. Once those larger fish get to the back of the coves they also find that the Crayfish are doing there thing right now. My guess is that many of the larger fish have turned there attention to a bottom feeding dinner plate. They love Crayfish and once discovered in abundance, they will leave the Shad. They feed on Shad all the time and follow them around like a puppy dog, until they run into something better for a change of menu.

To Donald�s point, I was fishing a bunch of stumps in 3 feet of water with about 2 feet of clarity yesterday. I was running a small craw colored square bill in and out the stumps and lay downs trying to crash off of as much of it as I could. I thought I was done with that cast and was reeling the last 15-20 feet back to the boat when I watched a 3.5 pounder dart out from the last stump and smash by lure.

In my experience, craw colors worked erratically around cover�especially when there is rock nearby�tends to be effective now.

I think it goes by situation sometimes but I sort of do what donald talks about now before I move on looking for bigger fish. Some lakes are different so it just depends. Big fish want the biggest/easiest meal possible. I've gone thru an area throwing a regular super fluke and not got a bite but maybe one or 2 little ones. Put on a magnum fluke and went back thru and had multiple 4-6 pound fish hitting it. The small fluke was to small for them to chase. That can be on other baits to. A 2.5 instead of a 1.5, a bigger swimbait, whatever the case. I always try to upside until I don't get anything then I will drop back down

Move to a different spot because that's why you were catching bank runners. That's all that was there.