east coast warmwater fishing update

well, me and FLY4IT went fishing yesterday down at one of the favorite spots. the water levels down about 5-6 FEET! :( there were some invasive weeds that had totally taken over the shallows about midway through summer, they were starting to die back. im guessing probably partly because of the cold, and partly because of the water level being so low. and i was just talking to a friend, and apperently the water level in some other waters is down about 15-20 feet. my friend had said that he was going to go down to that place and walk around with a camera and take pics of the place to figure out were the fish are going to be when the water comes back. but back to my fishing trip. we launched at about 6:30 and we were cruising through the shallows without much luck. FLY4IT was using a a jiggin shad, and i was experimenting around. he caught a few here and there. i caught 2 on a foil fry, i switched to a copper john, and caught one, tried a boa yarn leach, and didnt catch a thing. so then i switched to the jiggin shad. we caught a few here and there, until sunset. thats when they started hitting. we were using short fast strips with long moderate pauses and counting it down to about 2-4. in this second hour we probably caught about 40 fish and kept about 25-30. most were nice sized bluegill, but we started to catch a bunch of small bass in the 8-11 inch range. i caught one white perch and MAN WAS THAT ONE FUN!!! :D :D i thought it was about a 2 pound bass at first but it turned out just to be about, 12 inches. we caught plenty of small crappie wjich is a good sign for next spring, and we caught one good sized crappie. we also saw a big ol snapper come up next to the boat after one of the small bass. The friggin things head was about the size of a softball! :shock:
the main time the fish were hitting was as soon as it hit the water though, after sunset. and it was just very short fast strips and a moderate pause on a small size 8 minnow imitation on jig hooks.
Ill probably remember some other details about it later but thats what was working for us.
hope you all can get out on the water before winter...