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.