Welcome to the club. I'm still looking for my 5# largemouth and smallmouth. I'm certainly no expert in catching big bass. I've caught several 20 inch Canadian smallmouth over the years, but this is the biggest largemouth I've caught on a fly rod. I couldn't find my scale or my tape measure so I had to settle for a picture, and I was lucky there was someone around to take the picture. It was caught in a lake in the Poconos, late May, post-spawn, and it's pretty skinny. I'd like to have caught in August or September. You can see the fly I caught it on in its mouth. I was fishing for bluegills at the time.
It depends on the lake/pond. A lot of the lakes I fish are weedy. It's tough to fish Clousers or crayfish patterns in a lot of the lakes because of weeds. I use a lot of top waters, gurglers, sliders. poppers, weedless frog patterns for lily pads and surface weed beds.
The lake I caught the bass in the picture is not very weedy, and one of my non-fly fishing buddies and I are going to pay more attention to it this year when we go up in May. I don't fish a lot of Clousers but they are an effective. Tied in crayfish colors you can bounce them along the bottom or fish them as streamers in baitfish colors. I've been tying up some crayfish patterns and Ned flies, mainly for my Canadian trip in late August, but plan to test them around here first.
This is what my bass boxes are going to look like this year.
Subsurface
The Ned fly is in the upper right hand corner, crayfish in the lower right corner.
Top water
None of them over 4 inches long, which may explain why I don't catch a lot of bass over 5 lbs. I do have some streamers in the 6 to 8 inch range but they're usually for salt water or pike. I guess I should throw a couple in my box when I head up to the Poconos.