I'm just full of it this morning. Have another question that I'm looking for everybody's great answers for.

Got to the lake the other day, late morning, and the entire lake there were hundreds of ripples all over the place where it seems the fish were just under the surface, I don't know, sucking bugs off the top maybe ?? making these little ripples?

They best way to visually describe it is if you took two handfuls of very small pea gravel and just flung it across the water and all the little ripples that each individual pebble made from hitting the water (and about in that volume! ) that's what it looked like.

What are they doing?

SOUNDS LIKE YOU GOT SOME SHADS THAT ARE SCHOOLING. IF THEY START CLEARING THE WATER THEN YA KNOW THEY ARE BEING CHASED BY SOMETHING THAT IS BIGGER AND READY TO FEED ON THEM. USUALLY SHAD WILL SCHOOL AND SWIM ON THEIR SIDES JUST UNDER THE WATER'S SURFACE AND IT SOUNDS LIKE POPCORN POPPING. I HAVE SEEN SCHOOLS AS BIG AS 20 TO 30 FEET IN DIAMETER MOVING ACROSS THE TOP.

Baitfish...minnows, shiners, shads, etc.,...

Guess I should have asked this question in my Bait Fish post I did just before. I didn't realize that they were the same. Guess I was hoping they were a sport fish (crappie maybe) that were on the surface pulling bugs from the surface. Thank you both for though.

Any recommendations in that situation to take advantage of? I have tried a minnow jerk bait a couple of times from the dock with not much success, one maybe two crappie.

try using a heavy jig or spoon to rocket past the school and take advantage of a reaction bite,sometimes bigger fish are below the school waiting for an easy meal to fall right into their mouth

Yes, small fish like shad and shore minnows. They were feeding on plankton, the clouds of tiny plants and animals they depend on. Plankton is richest near the surface in full sunlight, and that's where predator fish find lots of dissolved oxygen. When they jump out of the water and scatter like mad a larger fish is probably going after them, but that could be a crappie targeting one out of a thousand.

When I see that I look for the deepest hole nearest to the feeding, or a group of stumps, a log, or anything a bass can hide around to ambush from. The larger bass prefer to wait for a shad or minnow to swim close enough to inhale it rather than have to swim after it. He might eat all he wants without moving 12 inches. Once you locate the ambush spot work on getting a bait that close to the bass. A spinnerbait is probably the easiest to do that with in that case, able to clammer over sticks and stumps right onto the "sweet spot".  Square billed crankbaits are good for that. Choice of bait is also guided by what's in the water and on bottom. If a weed cover exists that won't allow a spinnerbait to swim right try a jig&pig rigged weedless.

Have a rod rigged up to go after an actual splash of a large bass right in the middle of that school of baitfish. Like written above I like a Johnson Spoon for that case.

Jim

One thing I did leave out was, bigger fish were jumping. I'm going to guess Small & Large mouth's. Hard to see them some times because it was so quick or distance, if the sunlight caught them I'd catch flicks of greens and brown-ish reds, so I'd assume Smallies and LMs because both are stocked in this particular reservoir. But at times you'd see (or hear) larger fish break the surface coming up really fast and roll as they came out. Make a pretty nice splash on the way back down too!

Ultimately the lesson here is, fast and high the or jig the deep holes adjacent next time.

Thank you everybody for your input. It is immensely appreciated.

Carp do that.