I first pay attention to the river channel and look on the side it's closest to. It doesn't have to be right close to the shore, but closer and bends close by help a lot. What this does is create a lot more contour on the lake floor. I do look to points when targeting smallies, but have caught a ton of them bottom fishing gravel bluffs so bouncing spoons on gravel if fishing blind could get some bites. Pay attention to what the water flow has done to the shore and imagine what is going on under the water. If you look closely, many of the creeks or bays off the main lake have two distinctly different points. Not always, but many times. The point on the upper lake side is going to show more shale and will be much steeper. The point on the down lake side will be softer and have more gravel. This is because the flow takes material from one point, where its easy to move, and deposits it on the other, where it builds up. Now consider that its much easier for fish to herd bait into steeper banks and it gives you a really good idea where to look. Many of those bluffs before the steep points have bays. The steeper edges of those bays will have a pocket with a lot of depth change close to the shore. This makes an AWESOME ambush point as almost three sides are taken care of for the stripes and smallies. But if there is no bait close by, you might as well move on from even the best "looking" spot. I prefer top water if the conditions are right. It's nothing at all to draw a smallie from 30 ft down. Thin "spook" type baits if there is a ripple and a chug if its a light chop. I have a thin spook type bait that has a cup at the mouth to give off a little chug and it is usually deadly from calm up to a light light chop. If not on top, I like to use swim baits like sassy shads that I can count down. 3-4 inch, but since this was a mild winter with little smaller bait die off, a 2 inch might be the ticket. I've also done well with castmaster type spoons swam instead of jigged. Vertical jigging will work if you don't care what bites.

I'm putting this out there because I have several PMs from folks asking for more details. Just know I usually target stripers but haven't had much problems targeting smallies and spots when I try; do to what I learn from catching them by accident.

I haven't targeted Buckets in years but when I did, erratic stop and go cranks would draw a lot of attention close to cover in the creeks.