presentation suggestions?

[mayhem]

Last week I was able to get on the water two mornings down along the mangroves of Sanibel. Just NW of Ding Darling. Runyan Key. Granted I'm green, but I was in what I thought a prime location and I saw a lot of bait activity and shadows of fish cruising the mangroves. 2-3 feet of water and in a spot where there was good movement. Thought I was going to slay 'em. I'm left to conclude that my presentation must suck, because I tried for 2 hours and used the following lures: Spook jr., gold darts, rootbeer DOA split tail, mirrodine and finally a gulp shrimp.

Something blasted the spook just as soon as it hit the water one cast, but nothing after that. And something took a big bite from the DOA plastic, but no hookset. Also-I had everything rigged weedless, should I have just used a jig head?(not really much weeds) ...and if I'm stationary and fish are stacked up do I try to cast between the mangroves and shadows or in out in front of them? Even if my cast landed right on their heads, sometimes they didn't even move much... any suggestions or do I just keep throwing?

[IntimiGator]

sometimes fishing is like that, keep at it. What are you using for leader?

I vary my retrieval speed in those conditions to try and trigger a strike but
sometimes it's just not my day. Your's will come.

[Pmoconnor89]

Keep throwing! Generally I will use a topwater to find fish, earlier in the morning. Come about 9ish or when the sun is fully up I'll stop using it unless I'm getting consistent action. With a doa shrimp... Work it dreadfuly slow. I hated using them because I always wanted to give it action, but a good friend showed me I had to slow it down to the point where I thought it couldn't be any slower, then slow it down some more. With the darts and cal soft plastics, I use an erratic twitching action and vary it until I get a bite, then I try to duplicate the action I got lucky with. Something that helps for me is getting a song stuck in y head and twitching to the beat. Personally, with no weeds I find jigheads to work better, I have a hard time getting hooksets with weedless baits, although some will disagree with me on that. Cast around the shadows of fish you see, try not to hit them on the head. If there is a noticeable current, try to work the bait with the current as it will be a more natural presentation to the targeted fish. There's a lot of smaller variables that come into play, some of which are unexplainable and only come with experience, which is why we all fish. Use the advice you get here the best you can, but the most important method you can put into play is to just keep at it... Best of luck!