How to find bigger panfish on lakes and streams?

Been finding sporadic spots/ sporadic bigger fish but can’t seem to find a pattern. No matter what though it’s a blast!


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Same here - no pattern except scattered along raised flats 40 yds from shore; average depth 5.9 - 6.5' not far from 7'. Beetle Spin/ curl tail grub has caught sunfish, crappies and yellow perch. Curl tails by themselves have caught those and a few small bass. Covered a lot of water with a lot of casts around the boat and sometimes caught three fish in one spot. Caught 15 fish on a sunny windy day (wind averaged 15 mph or faster - good thing for 10 lb anchors!)

When it comes to larger fish, you get what you get unless you hit a school of decent fish by shear luck which doesn't happen very often. But one way to insure larger fish is to stay with larger lures though fewer fish overall.

yeah man I feel that. havnet been using as many lures but been using jig tipped worms and that covers a lot of ground, and usually find htem schooled up around some rocks really close to shore, away from the current of the river (when I'm fishing on the river, obviously). Haven't tried out the ebttlespin much but will have to. Mostly just use worms in differnt forms (jigs, sinker, just hook) or use trout magnets, but have been looking into getting some more jigs for my panfishing collection (If anyone has any good recommondations on that I would be very grateful for them).

I just can't bring myself to use the larger lures with less fish lol. I love the constant action even if it is small fish. I guess it depends on the day.

In lakes I typically fish the deeper edges of the weed beds staying +/- 15yds deeper then the edges & casting into them. I will also drop shot them with crawlers in the same area.

Rivers I look for cover or bends with calm water in backflow pools & fish the edges of the cover or currents.

sometimes there are just not many larger fish to be had , in many cases they end up getting taken home for dinner . depends on the waters themselves in many cases to . some spots just dont produce many large fish .

Keep trying, it's fun anyway. Go deeper for the big ones.