Since the morning bite was so good the last time there, I arrived at Eagle Lake at daylight.  When I arrived at the lily pad spot there was no visible activity.  I only caught two early on a Ribbit and the ones that did bite were tepid at best.  Going down one of the slightly sloping banks, I threw everything at them but the kitchen sink, but with no luck.  Caught some there last time but…There is aquatic grass everywhere that is less than 8 to 10 feet deep which makes it hard to fish effectively.  I remembered that a lipless crankbait works well in that situation, so I pulled out one of my “found” baits, brand unknown. Caught one on the first cast with it. Since I had solved the puzzle, I prepared to load the boat with fish and, of course, it didn’t happen. Here is what the bait looked like.

There are many docks on Eagle Lake, so after failing to find the secret, I decided to try to fish them. The grass made it next to impossible. Between the docks there is grass to varying degrees. There were also many schools of small threadfin shad. As I traveled from one dock to another, a bass blasted up through the grass to get a shad. Out came the Ribbit which is about the only thing that can be fished effectively in that situation. Bites were slow in coming but when they did the bass would butt the bait with its head and knock it out of the water as the fish came out of the water too. Then when the bait came down in the grass the bass couldn’t find it.  I had noticed that about noon the bite had started to crank up.  It was also hot as Hades and a thunderstorm was brewing in the distance, all signs that things were looking up.  A school surfaced in the grass between two docks and in 20 minutes there were four fish caught  and three bites missed.  I left for a few minutes expecting a school between all the docks, but when reality set in, I returned to the spot and caught one more, making nine with a FOD of 3 1/4 for the day.