I did something this week I pretty much never do; I went fishing three times. I usually stay from the lake on weekends, but I was up early Sunday, knew the lake wouldn’t be too crowded with weekenders in January, so took off and went fishing. I also went Tuesday and Thursday. The water temp was in the 40’s from last week’s cold weather, so this was the first real test of my new finesse baits in winter water. I did pretty well on Sunday, but fishing got progressively tougher as the week went.
Sunday
I launched my boat at mid lake on Cedar Creek. The water was still dirty, with less then two feet of visibility. And on top of that, a cold front came in shortly after I got on the water. Winds switched to the west, then to the northwest, and after the first couple of hours, there was too much wind on some of my spots for me to even fish them. This would seem to be a good test for the Ned rig as a winter bait. I’d added a new bait to try, along with the usual Finesse TRD. I’d read that minnow type plastics tend to be better winter baits than the TRD’s, so I rigged one rod with a new minnow bait I bought, and the another with the TRD. I went back and forth between these two baits all day.
The water temp was 46 to 47 degrees everywhere I went. That’s winter water in Texas. Many years, the water temp in our lakes doesn’t get much below that, and doesn’t even stay that low for long. In all my years of fishing, when I’ve bass fished water that cold, I’ve always caught next to nothing. I’ve always tried to stay away from water that cold, either by fishing for something other than black bass, or by fishing at a heated power plant lake in winter. The only exceptions were winter tournaments at cold water lakes. And I sure didn’t do very well at them. But the little baits worked well Sunday. I ended up catching 10 bass and one drum. Most were caught on the new minnow bait.
This 4 inch Z-Man Jerk ShadZ caught most of the fish Sunday.
I didn’t catch any real monsters Sunday, just a bunch of solid keepers. This 3.80 pound bass was the best of the day.
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, I launched at the Caney City ramp to fish the lower lake. It was 28 degrees as I drove to the lake, so a very chilly start. But very light winds with a high in the 50’s was forecast, so it sounded like another nice day to be out, once it warmed up a bit. I planned to spend most of the morning crappie fishing. Bobbi and I were both in the mood for fresh crappie for dinner, and it only takes a couple of big crappie to make a meal for us, so that was the main plan Tuesday.
But the crappie didn’t want to cooperate with that plan at all. Fishing most of the morning only produced one big crappie, and a few tiny ones. I’ve seen winter days before where the crappie didn’t bite well until late afternoon, so I decided to bass fish a few hours, then get back to the crappie. But the bass bite wasn’t much better. A couple of hours fishing only produced two bass. So I went back to the crappie fishing, and finally managed to catch another keeper, then another really nice one. I just kept the two biggest crappie, and with an hour left, went back to bass fishing.
In one spot, in a five minute stretch, I caught three nice bass. The biggest was 4.19 pounds, and another was 3.61. A nice finish to a tough day. Total for the day was 5 bass and three crappie (not counting the tiny crappie; there are usually a lot of them around, and I never count them toward my total catch of the day.
The best bass of the day, a 4.19 pounder.
One of two big crappie I kept.
Thursday
I was back at the mid lake on Thursday, and with the water temperature still in the upper 40’s, it proved to be the toughest day of the week. I would hope the winter crappie fishing will pick up some, but the bass fishing may remain really tough for the next month or so. We’ll see. I don’t really have any good winter crappie spots mid lake, but with the bass fishing so tough, I spent a few minutes working crappie jigs at one spot that looked likely for winter crappie, and sure enough, caught two really nice crappie. I kept these two for the freezer. I ended up catching 3 bass, 2 crappie, 1 big drum, 1 nice blue catfish, and 1 big white bass. That’s definitely a tough day by my standards, but hey, it was still a lot more fun than all those Thursdays I spent working for so many years.
I didn’t weigh any bass today. Here was the biggest of the day. It was likely just under 3 pounds.
One of two really nice crappie I kept.
It’s Saturday now. A big cold front has hit today, and with frigid temperatures forecast for the next week, I likely won’t be doing any fishing. I’ll definitely be tinkering with tackle some though. It was only last month that I first seriously tried a Ned rig, and started really exploring all the possibilities that jigs paired with simple finesse plastics offer for bass fishing, and I’m still doing a lot of exploring and experimenting. More on that later.