New fisherman saw bass, couldn't get them to bite.

Heyo, I'm _very_ new to bass fishing (fishing in general, as well),
but I've been going out about every other week with my father-in-law
for about a month.

Just yesterday morning we were in his canoe on Dorena Resevoir
(Western Oregon) in a few shallow channels where the water is coming
over the grassy flats (1-4 feet of water), we were there from 5:30 to
9 but couldn't get any bass to bite. I know they were there because
we kept spooking them! We'd come into one of the little channels
rather slowly, and inch our way into the shallow end casting as we
went, and as we continued we'd see the Vs (and sometimes the fish
themselves) as we moved over the spots we were casting to earlier. He
was using a popper lure for a while (which caught the only fish of the
day, one pound), and then moved to a crawdad-like surface lure. I
started with a crankbait, quickly gave up because of the grass, and
then tried a black spinnerbait followed by a black plastic "grub"
rigged weedless.

Anyone know what we're doing wrong? My father-in-law thinks that it's
too cold; we've had a really late spring here, we got a half inch of
snow a week ago...