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.