Absolutely structure fishing is key. The bank can be king at times but structure is where numbers of fish will be caught consistently summer or winter keeping the thermocline and baitfish in mind.@dennishoddy I totally agree with you. I will say though there are some things that have better action that others. For instance I think a Yamamotto senko will out-fish any brand of senko knock off. You may only get one fish per bait but they have that salt/plastic ratio perfect.
I think back to when Major League fishing started. They were fishing Falcon I believe. They were killing fish on jerk baits. They cut to KVD and he had a Megabass vision tied on. You could clearly tell was what it was. Even though around that time he had introduced the Strike King Jerk bait. I always wondered why certain baits are better than other brands. For instance I have tried lots of rattle trap knock offs from off brand to Japanese ones that cost 4-5x the cost. I still caught more fish on the rattle trap.
I have seen pros and the stuff on their deck is usually all beat to heck with no paint because they know that one of 20 of the exact same bait has that just a bit erratic movement to it. Anyway I am getting into the weeds.
One thing I thought of when reading the opps posts is talk about fishing the bank. One of the best things you can do is learn to leave the bank and find the channel, structure and other in water things that hold fish. Its hard to do but once you learn to fish open water everything changes.
I've done a little scuba diving in some of the clear lakes around Arkansas. It's amazing how the fish hold just above the thermocline where there is oxygen. Below that, they will suffer if they stay too long. That being said, banks can be killer in the mornings when they have cooled off overnight.
Edit: I talked to some of the ODW biologist once while they were electro shocking to get fish numbers. Asked them about where on the lake was the best place to fish. They said there was no real hotspot, but to always fish the windy side of the lake as the wave action moves the bait fish into the shallow water and puts more O2 into the water.