bass fishing at a public Lake

today we were fishing a man-made public lake that been around for decades. we decided to target large and small mouth bass that we slightly were successful by catching a bass on a large jig.
here are some baits we used today:
spinner bait-unsuccessful (too many weeds)
large jig -successful (easy to slip past the thick weeds/very life like)
small jig -unsuccessful (it could NOT get far enough)
other baits-unsuccessful