I had another incredible day of fishing at Lake Fork yesterday. The bass spawn is really going right now, with bass on beds everywhere. I ended up catching 17 bass, with all but two being 3 pounds or bigger. There was one 7 pounder and five 4 pounders, with one of those amost a 5 pounder, at 4.85.

The main lake is 58 degrees now. There was a pretty stiff north wind early yesterday, but it eased up as the day went. And like so often seems to happen at Fork in the spring, it was pretty tough fishing in the morning, but then a spectacular bite in the afternoon. It seemed to be a smaller crowd on the lake than usual yesterday, and most of the ones who were fishing either weren’t targeting bedding bass, or weren’t finding them. The water has cleared slightly, but it still takes a pretty keen eye to spot most of them.

Stormy days are predicted for the rest of the week, so I’m not sure if I’ll make it there again this week or not.

This fish, the best bass of the day, weighed 7.06 pounds.

Sight fishing for spawning bass is very different from most fishing an angler would undertake. You are casting a bait to a bass you can see, sitting on its bed, watching the bass’ reaction to your bait, and in the best of circumstances, seeing the bass inhale the bait. I end up covering a lot of water when I bed fish at Lake Fork, much of it either navigating the stumps with the trolling motor on high, or idling with the big motor, as I move from one spawning cove to the next, then watching without even having a rod in my hand as I troll along once I’ve reached a likely area.

When I see a bass, or something I’m convinced is a bed, I’ll stop and survey the area carefully, waiting to see if a bass comes back to the bed, or if I can see another bass in the area. Bass do tend to pick the same areas as other bass to spawn in. And so there is often more than one bedding bass visible at a time. Many of these bass are so spooky with a moving boat around that you will only see them returning to their beds if you stop and remain fairly still for a few moments. These aren’t days when I catch a large number of fish. I really don’t try for bedding bass that are under three pounds, but then can spend a half hour trying to catch a bass on a bed. Many bedding bass prove to be uncatchable, most probably because they have already been recently caught and released. Those fish will usually not return to their bed when a boat is anywhere nearby, or else leave the bed at full speed any time a lure is cast to it.

So the bottom line is I spend a lot of time doing other things besides seriously trying to entice a catchable fish, so usually only hook somewhere between 3 and 12 fish on one of these Fork bed fishing days. I use good seven foot medium power fast action fishing rods, and have recently upgraded to some size 30 spinning reels to pair with them (most of my reels are smaller size 10 reels) for the Z-Man TRD plastics I use on a tiny child rig. These are finesse baits, finesse fishing being pretty much the only bass fishing I do in my arthritic old age. I keep three of these rods rigged, and no other rods on the deck of my boat, for these trips. One of the most amazing things about these finesse rigs is how few nice fish you lose. Out of the 15 bass I’ve hooked on my last two fishing trips on this timber and clumpy weeds filled lake, I’ve lost zero. I’ve never seen another finesse rig that lands such a high percentage of nicer bass.

Yesterday was the perfect weather day for sight fishing, sunny with light winds all day. There are too few days like that in the spring in Texas. Lake Fork draws huge crowds of anglers this time of year, and yesterday was no exception. I’m always surprised at how few of these fishermen are actually sight fishing for bass, and out of the ones who are, just how few are very good at it. I routinely fish right behind other boats, some of them with step ladders or other raised platforms on the deck (a practice that seems far too dangerous on a stumpy lake like Fork, to me), and catch so many fish they have missed. How does an almost 74 year old man wearing prescription sunglasses accomplish this? I don’t know, but I won’t argue with it. I take photos of all the fish I catch on these trips. It helps me keep a count of what I catch, plus I enjoy sharing pics with Bobbi while I’m out.

And so that is the backdrop for my trip to Lake Fork yesterday, that turned into the bass fishing day of a lifetime for an amateur like myself. I ended up catching 10 fish, two of them 4 pounders, three of them 6 pounders, and one 7 pounder. My best five fish would have weighed over 30 pounds. I never managed to accomplish that feat in all my tournament fishing years, or even before or since, for that matter. I didn’t even catch my first fish until 11:21, so most of the excitement was in the afternoon hours. Some highlights of the day:

11:59: I was trolling out of the cove where I’d caught my first fish, near the main point. Most days, this stretch of bank would have had too much wind on it for me to even check it, but on this almost completely calm day, I was looking. This fish was like the holy grail of bed fishing. I spotted her from quite a ways away. She never saw me at all, even while I was making my long casts towards her. She took the bait on my second cast. I got a very solid hookset, and she ran right out of the weeds that surrounded her, into the open water. This scenario is what every bedding bass angler is looking for, but doesn’t often happen. My second bass of the day, she weighed 6.30 pounds.

1:40: I had made it into my favorite spawning cove on Fork. I’d caught a couple of fish in it already. One of them weighed 4.24. This fish was far back in a tiny opening in the weeds. I only threw my bigger TRD at this fish. That rig has 20 pound test braided line on it (as opposed to the 15 pound test on my other two rods), and I knew I needed all the help I could get to get her out of all these weeds, if I hooked her. There were other bedding fish nearby, and with my pole anchor down, I was going back and forth fishing for her and the other fish. It took me about 15 minutes to catch her. My fifth bass of the day, this beauty weighed 7.04, my best bass of the year so far.

2:24: This fish was one of the other fish I was fishing for when I caught my last fish. She was on a deeper bed with a male mate. Neither of these fish stayed on the bed well or showed much interest in my bait when I first fished for them, so I had moved to the back of the cove and fished for several likely looking bed fish there, but failed to catch any of them. On my way back out of the cove, I stopped to try these two fish again, and she immediately acted much more aggressive this time, and took the bait on my fourth cast. My sixth bass of the day, this one weighed 6.42.

4:31: After catching another 4 pounder, I’d left my favorite cove and moved to another smaller cove I really like. There were a number of fish to be seen, but most were either just cruising the shallows, or sitting suspended, with no visible bed nearby. This beautiful fish appeared to be on a bed, but when I cast a bait to her, she just moved to another spot that looked like a bed. When I cast there, she took off to another spot. This is a common occurrence, musical beds, I call it. When fish do this, they usually aren’t catchable, so I moved on fairly quickly. I managed to find a nice chunky 3 1/2 pounder a little further into the cove. That fish stayed on the bed, acted aggressive toward my bait, and was soon getting it’s photo taken and being released. I didn’t find anything else that seemed catchable in the back of the cove, and as I moved back out of the cove, this fish was again on the bed where I’d first seen her. As soon as I cast to her, she again moved to what looked like another bed. When I cast there, she immediately inhaled my bait and took off with it. As I set the hook, I don’t know who was more shocked, me or the fish. She ran behind clump after clump of weeds, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to land her. But I followed with the boat, then managed to coax her around the worst clump of weeks, and netted her. My ninth bass of the day, this one weighed 6.55.

One 3 3/4 pounder in the next cove, and my day was done. An unforgettable day it was for me.

The wind was fierce all week this week, but I made a couple of trips to Lake Fork anyway. Monday was a howling south wind, with main lake water temps in the lower 50’s, and just like last week, there were some shallow cruising bass, but none that would hold a bed and take a bait.

Thursday was a very chilly morning with the wind whipping from the northwest. My favorite area is a bit better protected from that, and even though the morning water temps were just as cold as Monday, I figured the warmer weather in between would finally have a few lower lake bass on the beds, and I was right. It was still very tough, and I only caught 5 bass, but two of them were 4 pounders, and I had to call the day a fun one.

No monster bass Thursday. This 4.46 pounder was the best fish of the day.

Last week was the first week of March. I’ve been starting with my annual Lake Fork trips that week. But there was a flooding rain early in the week, then a couple of cold windy days, so I didn’t make it to Fork until that Thursday. The water temp at the part of the lake I fish was just 49 degrees, and there were no bedding bass to be found anywhere. So I wrote it off as an exploring trip, and scouted some areas of the lake I hadn’t been to in a long time. And I decided I was going to give the lake another full week to warm up before I came back, and just fish Cedar Creek this week.

I launched mid lake Tuesday morning and went back to my best jig and bobber spot. The crappie were biting there, but not as well as two weeks earlier. I didn’t find a good jig and bobber bite anywhere else that morning, and the wind got up so much I wasn’t able to fish the dock and bridge spots I wanted to try out later. I ended up just doing some bass fishing in protected areas, but only caught one small bass. I ended up with 15 crappie.

Tuesday’s jig and bobber crappie were definitely flying their spawning colors.

I went back to the same part of the lake Thursday morning. The jig and bobber bite was very tough, and I only managed a couple of crappie. The wind wasn’t bad on this day, and I was able to spend some time fishing docks and a bridge, but that was a very tough bite too. I ended up with 8 crappie for the day, and one bass. But the bass was a nice one, almost 4 pounds.

This bass from Thursday morning weighed 3.85 pounds.

This week was mostly warm weather, so I’m thinking those Lake Fork bass should be on beds in the part of the lake I like to fish, so I’m planning on going back and trying it again this week. It looks like a windy week coming, not good when you’re trying to see and fish for bedding bass, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway.

I managed to get out fishing twice this week. On Tuesday, I made another trip up my favorite Cedar Creek winter crappie creek. But word had obviously gotten out about the fishing there. There were so many boats in the creek that I left after catching 10 crappie, and headed back down to the main lake. Water temps on the main lake were 46 to 48 degrees, and the fishing there was very tough. I only caught one small black bass. When I went fishing again yesterday, I decided to fish the mid lake. With water temps still so cold, I wondered if I would catch much there, but decided to give it a try anyway. I decided to start the day with some jig and bobber fishing. Little did I know then that every fish I caught on this day would be caught on a jig and bobber.

Bobbers are used in fishing in a wide variety of places and conditions. But jig and bobber fishing for shallow spawning crappie is very specific, and the conditions have to be just right to catch much. Crappie tend spawn deeper than black bass. While you can often see bass on beds at that time, seeing crappie spawning is pretty rare. I never have. But in murky water, sometimes they do spawn very shallow. And school fish that they are, there is sometimes a surprising number of them together in very shallow water. Enter the jig and bobber. It’s simply a crappie jig, rigged very shallow, usually 12 to 14 inches below a bobber. You just cast it out and let it set (mostly) in water that’s 2 to 4 feet deep. If the crappie are there, and that’s a big if, you can sometimes catch quite a few in a short time.

The crappie are only there a short time and while, like bass, more than one wave of them are likely to show up spawning shallow in a spring season, you have to be in the right place at the right time to catch them. In a shallow lake like Cedar Creek, which also has a lot of water level fluctuation, that can be pretty tough. When I first moved to this area, I spent time every spring trying to locate good jig and bobber spots. I did get into some great jig and bobber fishing now and then, but was mostly disappointed with the spots I found. The few that worked, all had years when they didn’t work at all. And on most fishing days, it seemed, there were other techniques that would produce better. Still, I have a couple of spots mid lake where I try a few times most years.

Yesterday, I caught 26 crappie on one 50 foot stretch of sea wall, and caught nothing else all day. Did I mention that a jig and bobber bite can be very specific? This spot is near the back of a long narrow cove. The middle of that part of the cove is only 3 feet deep, and near the sea wall where the crappie were is only 2 feet deep. It’s a long ways from water of much depth, much further than most people would think crappie, a mostly deep water schooling fish, would ever travel to spawn. But there they were. It can be very surprising just how many big crappie can be in such a shallow spot. A half dozen of yesterday’s crappie were 2 pounders, and most of the others were really nice size crappie. And watching a bobber quickly disappear underwater is a blast, more fun than people who’ve never done it would suspect.

One of yesterday’s 2 pound crappie.

Astute jig and bobber crappie anglers will tell you that the jig and bobber setup matters a lot. You want a bobber that just barely floats the jig, and so will go underwater without much resistance at all. It’s because of the way crappie feed. They don’t snap or bite at a bait. They tend to feed facing up, and their mouths are big enough that they just open it and suck the bait in. If there’s much resistance to the bait being sucked in, many them won’t take it. You can still catch some fish on the oversize bobbers that so many fishermen tend to use, but a delicate one better matched to the bait so that it sinks very easily will catch a lot more crappie. For that reason, you see all kinds of barely floating crappie bobbers, everything from porcupine quills to pencil shaped bobbers. I opt for something simpler, the styrofoam bobbers that are inexpensive and easy to find. The smallest I can find is a good match for my smallest jig, a 1/24th ounce jig with 1 inch plastic shad. But I use my bigger crappie plastic more often, a 1 3/4 inch shad, on a jig with a bigger hook. That will sink the smallest styrofoam bobber, but isn’t heavy enough for the next bigger styrofoam bobber you can find. I solve that by just cutting the bobber shorter, to make it barely float above the jig. It’s a simple solution that works well.

The jig and bobber that caught most of yesterday’s crappie. Yes, the top of that plastic is frayed from having so many crappie teeth on it.

In the morning, the water temp in that shallow cove was barely warmer than the main lake, 52 degrees. But by afternoon, it had warmed up to 59 degrees, a reminder of why those crappie had travelled to it, and were doing what they were doing. I had left that spot when the bite slowed after catching 19 crappie, but when I didn’t catch anything at all in the other spots I tried, I came back to that spot in the afternoon and caught 7 more crappie. I don’t know if I’ll make it back to these crappie this year or not. It’s March 1st. This is when I usually start making my bass bed fishing trips to Lake Fork. The water temp there is bound to be colder than usual too though, so there may be very few beds to be found on the lower lake, which is the only part of the lake still clear enough to sight fish for many bass. But I’ll probably make a trip or two there next week anyway. Even if the fishing is very tough, I can scout the lake and check out this year’s water conditions. As much as I love jig and bobber fishing for crappie, I love sight fishing for big Lake Fork bass even more. We’ll see what the week brings.

A week ago Monday, the 10th, I made another Cedar Creek trip up my favorite creek, and found lots of crappie. I caught 40 crappie before lunch, and many were really nice crappie. On my way back down the creek, I did a bit of bass fishing with a tiny child rig, and caught a couple of bass as well. Water temp up the creek was 60 degrees, and it wasn’t nearly as muddy as usual. Those conditions would both change in short order.

One of 40 crappie from Monday the 10th.

One of two nice bass I caught on my way out of the creek after my crappie fishing.

Tuesday night, we got a lot of rain, and I headed back up the creek Wednesday morning. But it was 44 degrees with a pouring rain when I reached the boat ramp, so I sat and waited for the rain to stop. It was after 9:00 before it stopped, so I got a very late start going up the creek. The crappie were biting again, but the water was rising so fast that I only got to fish a couple of hours, then left, with concerns about the rising water keeping me from getting out of the creek. With all the current and muddy water, there was no bass bite in the lower creek like there had been Monday. I ended up with 14 nice crappie before I had to leave. Water temp was 55 degrees.

Between that rain and the next cold rain, Cedar Creek got full. The water level is now at normal level, and they released water from the spillway for several days. When I headed up the creek yesterday, there was still a lot of current and very muddy water, and the water temp was 48 degrees. That seemed to move the crappie deeper. Where I had been catching them in 5 to 8 feet of water last week, there was a better bite in 8 to 10 feet of water yesterday. I ended up with 25 crappie. There was no bass bite in that cold muddy water. All crappie in all three trips were caught on my homemade jigs and plastic.

One of yesterday’s nice crappie.

It always seems to work out that when you’re experimenting and dialing in a new type bait, conditions change so much that you need to just put that off until later. And so it happened with me and Ned rigs. But winter crappie fishing in the creek is so much fun, I won’t complain. It seems likely that I won’t get out the rest of this week, with really cold weather forecast for the next few days. We’re less than two weeks from the first of March, which is usually when I start sight fishing bass beds at Lake Fork. But it’s hard to imagine Fork warming up fast enough for that to happen this year, so the bed fishing may get a late start. The crappie fishing in the creek will start to drop off soon, but I’m probably going to just keep entertaining myself with it while it lasts.

These last three weeks, fishing had been really tough for me. The week of cold weather dropped Cedar Creek water temps into the mid 40’s, then last week’s big rain brought enough muddy water into the lake to raise the level two and a half feet. The lake is less than 6 inches low now. Long term, that water rise will be great for the lake and fishing, but not so much for right now. Even before the big rain, I wasn’t catching a lot. Usually, in the dead of winter, there are some lower lake spots where crappie fishing can be decent, or downright good, for me, but not this winter.

And the lake was too low for me to get into feeder creeks which can also be great winter spots. Even when the lake is full or nearly so, logs and fallen trees can make getting into the creeks impossible. On Tuesday, I fished the lower lake, first trying to get far enough into my favorite creek, then when I wasn’t able to, just fishing the lower main lake. I didn’t have any luck finding crappie, so finally spend a few hours fishing the Ned rig for bass. That was really tough too, and I only caught two catfish and two bass on it. One of the bass was a four pounder, though.

This long and big headed, but skinny bass I caught Tuesday weighed 4.07 pounds.

I launched the boat on the lower lake again yesterday, and this time, I was able to get far enough up that creek to reach my winter crappie spot. Sure enough, the crappie were there. I caught 28 keeper size crappie before lunch time, many of them really nice ones. I kept four of the really big ones, and released the rest. Four giant crappie make two meals for Bobbi and I, so I split the fillets into two bags in the freezer. I caught all the fish swimming crappie jigs in 5 to 8 feet of water. The surface water temp was 60 degrees in the creek. That’s spawning time for crappie, and a great time to be crappie fishing. This creek bite won’t be this good for long, but while it lasts, it’s a blast.

A lot of yesterday’s creek crappie were really nice ones, like this one.

After I left the creek, I spent a couple of hours bass fishing on the main lake, and caught nothing. Water temp on the lower lake was 48 degrees. Even this stretch of warmer weather and all the warmer water coming into the lake hasn’t warmed that part of the lake much yet. It should be better fishing soon though.

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.

I made another fishing trip on Cedar Creek yesterday, fishing mid lake. The lake has risen more than a foot after last week’s rain, and is now less than three feet low. That’s still low enough to make the lake ugly, but more boat ramps work better at this level. And the cover at my fishing spots is better at this level. The water is much dirtier after all that rain. The lower part of mid lake only had a couple of feet of visibility, and the upper part of it had less than a foot. I haven’t seen this part of the lake that dirty in quite a while. It was in the low 40’s yesterday morning, but warmed to the mid 60’s, and the wind stayed light all day, so it was a nice day to be out. There are obviously still a lot of holiday people at the lake, because I saw more boats on the water than I have in quite a while.

I’ve been bass fishing a milk run on the mid lake regularly all fall, and it’s been interesting how the bite has changed as we’ve progressed from fall to winter. All fall, I’ve been fishing boat docks, rocky points, and the rocks on sea walls. I’ve fished a lot of main lake banks, as well as some coves. I’ve been using a Big TRD on a tiny child rig and a crankbait. The tiny child rig was best for the thick cover of the docks, and the crankbait worked best on the rocks. By late fall, coves that didn’t have deep water very nearby had stopped working. Then, the bite got tougher and tougher on the docks, even while rocks on sea walls between them were still holding a few fish.

But the bite on the rocks was getting tougher and tougher. That didn’t surprise me. Bass using rocks for cover are open water fish, and open water bass can be very finicky. From my earliest tournament days, I’ve loved fishing rocks. More than a few of the biggest bass I’ve caught have come from rocks. On days when bass there are more aggressive, they will hit many baits such as crankbaits or spinnerbaits or a big bass jig. But there are days when they can be extremely tough to catch, and I knew the falling water temperatures and thus the bass’ slower metabolisms were making that the case now. It’s been a very mild winter so far, but water temperatures have slowly fallen to the low 50’s, and that seems to be the point where you end up with consistently finicky winter bass.

That’s why I added the Ned rig to my lure arsenal. I’ve always just abandoned the bass when they got this finicky in late fall or early winter, and switched to crappie fishing. But I wanted to see if I could continue to catch some bass this winter. I knew it was time for a true finesse bait, and a Ned rig is among the best of finesse baits. After the crankbait bite had gotten so tough on the rocks, I had managed to catch a few bass on the rocks with the tiny child rig, but that bite kept getting tougher too. It was the Ned rig that showed me there were still bass on those rocks, and I was surprised at how may bass I caught on them.

But now, even those sea wall bass seem to be gone. Only points with rocks and very deep water very nearby worked yesterday. I had seen that coming, and identified another spot to add to what I had for the winter, and I’m glad I did. That was one of the few productive spots I had yesterday. I fished a few of my favorite docks and sea walls, just to check them, but a single drum was my only catch there. I ended up with 8 bass and 2 drum for the day, and all the rest of the fish came from rocks near deep water. It’s looking like that, plus a little crappie fishing thrown in, will be my fishing pattern for a while.

I caught another 6 pounder yesterday on a Ned rig. It was only my fourth trip using a Ned rig, and I’ve already caught two 6 pounders on one. So don’t let anyone tell you these little finesse baits won’t catch big fish. I’ve been truly impressed with them. I lost another jig to rocks yesterday. That’s two jigs lost in four fishing trips. Not bad, I’m thinking. I can definitely live with that. If you’ve ever fished any kind of jigs in rocks, you know how bad they are about getting hung up there. If the hooks don’t catch the rocks, the jig head itself gets wedged between them. But if you use a very light jig, and try to keep it just off the rocks most of the time, you don’t hang up often. And when you do, you can usually just move the boat over where the jig is hung, and get it loose. I’m making my own jigs, and the ElaZtech the Finesse TRD’s are made of is so tough, it lasts through a lot of fish caught, so a Ned rig can be a very frugal way of fishing.

Yesterday’s best bass weighed 6.04 on my digital scale, my second bass over 6 pounds on a Ned rig in just four fishing trips with them.

This 3.70 pounder was yesterday’s second best bass. I didn’t measure any of the 8 bass I caught, but I think all 8 would have made a 14 inch tournament limit. Not bad results for a tiny finesse bait in January.

I’ve been truly surprised at how many big drum I’ve caught on the Ned rig. Big drum were rare catches before I started using TRD baits, but now seem to be a regular thing. Both of yesterday’s drum were too big for me to try and hold up to take a selfie with, so I just took pics of them in the landing net.

I was throwing two different Ned rigs yesterday. Here is the one that caught the 6 pounder. I’m still tinkering with my Ned rig setup. More on that later.

The weather is supposed to turn really cold tomorrow (really cold by Texas standards), with hard freezes in the morning every day next week. That will no doubt make the bass fishing even tougher. We’ll see if there are any more winter bass to be found after that. I might have to turn to crappie for my winter fishing entertainment.