this topic should provide some useful reading material.

My skills are limited considering that I havent fished for LMB near as long as others on here, but my absolute best piece of advice is to fish cover. Anything that could possibly offer a bass something to hide behind, beside, or under should be fished extensively. Underwater trees, laydowns, brushpiles, docks, boats, trash, lillypads, weeds, ANYTHING. If you are in a body of water with limited cover, you can garuntee that what little cover there is will have a bass hiding in it. They are ambush predators, and therefore require an object to ambush from for the most part. I've read where bass go deep in the summer heat, but that hasnt been my experience so far. I catch most along weedlines and lilly pads along the banks. Also, if you catch a LMB, gut him and look at what he is eating. They will eat just about anything available, so looking at his stomache contents will show you what the natural baits available in that body of water are. If you can find out what they are eating, you have doubled your chances of catching one. Lastly, it's best to put the lure/bait close to where the bass are. Sometimes you can cast within 5 feet of them and they wont budge, but cast it within 1 foot of them, and they will hit it with a voracity like no other. Being an ambush predator, they generally dont care to move much out of there way for a lure, but prefer instead for one to come to them. With that being said however, once you have gotten the bass' interest, they might follow a lure all the way back to the boat before hitting it. Its just a matter of getting the fish to become interested in the bait initially. Best of luck trying them out, and give some topwater baits a try. Once you get a topwater hit from a bass, thats all she wrote, you'll be hooked.