Bittersweet weekend for me on Sam Rayburn. The bitter part is that I am lost when it comes to targeting 4#+ bass. Anytime I've caught anything around that weight it's dumb luck. After unsuccessfully finding quality fish I decided to dedicate the last 2 days to fishing offshore and found a couple schools, using sonar and side scan, marked them, and tore them up. That was the sweet part because I had never been able to do that so all in all I made good progress this weekend and caught over 100 fish those 2 days. The problem is that after weeding through countless spots I never caught a quality fish. I did confirm that if I threw a CRig or Trig out there that I could target the black bass and not catch the whites and crappie that were choking on the spoon. Both schools I found were mixed species. I surveyed my fishing buddies (all 3 of them)about the likelihood of catching a big LMB casting at that school. 1 said he'd never caught a big one around a school of spots, one said I could weed through them and there might be a toad in there and the last has a theory that big bass might feed on spots and that it would be a gamble but there very well could be a big un in there.

So now I'll survey my virtual TFF friends. What say you?

Can you catch a LMB around a school of spots? single choice
	Absolutely! Keep weeding through them!
	No. They won't be around them.
	I'd spend a hour and if you dont get one, move on.
	You're an idiot.
Votes accepted starting: 04/28/14 11:27 AM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

I forgot to mention water depth was 28'-33'

I'm tempted to vote idiot, very tempted.

Why?

With schooling lmb bigger ones hang out underneath the smaller ones from my experience. I've never been in a school of spots so I didn't vote. I do know smaller fish are much more agressive in school and with lmb if you can get your lure past the small ones then you can usually catch a bigger one.

Because it was an option.

It's tough to leave fish to find bigger fish. Those spots are little killing machines. Maybe c-rig something really big in hopes that the spots will pass on it.
Big post-spawn LM's may well be around eating injured shad but they aren't gonna be aggresive.
I've been in that situation and tried to determine the direction the school is moving and fish "behind" them....I've had it work but most of time it doesn't...at least for me.

Yoyo a rattle trap off the bottom below the school or slowly work a spoon

I'll have to try the trap. The spoon, if casted, would usually yield a spot. If I dropped it vertically it wouldn't even make it to the bottom before whites were all over it.

This situation comes around a lot, and there aren't many clear answers. I think maybe a really big plastic swimbait on a heavy swimjig or drag a beaver on a swing jig head....something too big for spots and sandies to get hooked up on.

Try throwing past the schooling fish and bring your baits under the schooling fish. Yoyo your trap or spoon below the school. Bigger fish will be under the agressive fish feeding on injured bait fish. If you try to throw in the school it probably won't make it through the school.

BIG spoon

Big bait = big fish. Like many lakes, BIG largemouths will feed on smaller games fish, yellow bass, small sandies, crappie, etc. Maybe throwing a big 6" flutter spoon will eliminate a bunch of bites from smaller fish.

Oh, and before everyone jumps on me, I know small fish (especially bass) will readily eat prey as big as they are. Also, I know big fish will eat really small lures too. Just saying that if you want to specifically target big fish, you're best bet is using larger baits more times than not.

In my experience, the whites will tear up the trap, will never get to the LMB.

+1 on the bigger LMB hanging out under the schoolies. Caught a 10.2 and 6.8 last summer fishing under a school. The problem was it took me 5-6 casts to get it to the bottom.