Fairtax4me

Seems like the recent influx of warm-ish water has just spread the bass out everywhere. Last three fishing trips have been tough and if the bass want to eat anything it’s moving super slow on the bottom. Ive caught a few bass, and they’ve been in anywhere from 5 FOW to 35FOW. Have seen bass on sonar in every depth. Bait fish piled up everywhere. Water surface temps are still hovering between 42-46° at most places it seems. Visibility in any body of water within a few hours from here is less than 2 feet. The deep end of Briery was maybe 3.5 feet vis yesterday, but lots of debris floating everywhere. Anna may be better below the splits but I haven’t been there to check. And still... more rain in the forecast. Up to 1/2” tomorrow, and possibly another inch or more later this week.

65lb braid I tie a knot through the holes in the spool to keep it from slipping. If it doesn't have holes I use a few yards of heavy Mono, but half a spool is far to much when using heavy line. Just because you can't pull it and make it slip doesn't mean it wont slip when a fish is on the other end and that line has been wet. It doesn't take half a spool of mono to keep it from slipping either. 10 yard or so is usually plenty. Fill the rest with braid. For lighter braid (30lb or under) I do this rather than tying directly to the spool. For big fish in pads, You just can't let them get in the pads or you'll lose them almost every time. Heavy Braid, Heavy Rod. Cross their eyes with the hook set and get the head of the fish turned AWAY from the pads and force that fish to come to the boat. Your next weak link will be bent hooks. Do some research because there is TONS of info on fishing these methods. Put down the noodle rods, pick up the crane and winch, it will pay off.

Had a few places in mind to fish Wednesday and every place that I checked on Tuesday had been flooded and water was receding. Visibility a foot and a half or less in all of them. Leaves, sticks, debris floating everywhere. Muddy cold water like that has always spelled disaster for me in the past. My buddy and I opted for cleaner water for a fishing trip Wednesday. We found a puddle (literally) with about 8 foot vis clean water, and tore some smallmouth up on blade baits! Rocky bottom, and they were just kind of spread all over out in deep water. 39° surface temp. Have a few more places on the list to check for this weekend. Hopefully this warm-ish rain were getting right now will wake the fish up a little.

Where in Va are you? Hopefully you can find some relatively clean water. Pretty much everything near me except for Anna is pretty soupy right now. Not what I’m used to for winter fishing. Cold chocolate milk is really hard to fish!

Thanks Sam. Rivers anywhere on this end of the state are ALL out of the question. Rivanna is practically in my backyard and crested around 18 feet (flood stage is 17) early this morning. Solid mud and flat out dangerous. James has flood warnings, same with the Rap. Was going to fish the Jackson on Wednesday but the area I was going to fish jumped from 4 to 9 feet yesterday. Will not be fishable by Wednesday. The Tye, Maury, South, and Shenandoah have similar conditions. Potomac and Chickahominy will likely have high current and be pretty muddy for the next few weeks. Sandy flooded big time when the hurricane came though. I have pics of the dumpsters from the parking lot that floated across the lake. o.O It had got back to normal level but I’m sure it will rise again some with this latest rain. They had over a foot of snow in Farmville area last week and had at least an inch of rain from this weekend. Briery was muddy last week, low 40s above the power line. Warmer down towards the dam but I didn’t get all the way down to the dam to see exactly. I suspect that will remain muddy for a while. Considered No fish Anna, but my buddy and I decided on smaller water. Just hoping it won’t be totally blown out when we get there Wednesday morning! Have been keeping an eye on the forecast for next week and the estimated rainfall totals for my area keep wavering around an inch. Everything is already soaked, so it’s not looking pretty. Keep the tips coming if you have some! I’ll certainly put some of these to the test this week! What I’m hoping for, is a few days of steady warm sunny weather, leading up to a nice pre-front fishing day just before the full moon. How many more things can add up to a potentially awesome day of winter fishing?

This is interesting to me as well. People say this all the time, but I’ve watched some video of bass eating crayfish, and they don’t seem to use their jaws/lips to eat them. The crushers inside the mouth for sure get a workout, but the lips? I’ve caught quite a few bass that were clearly feeding on bait fish, but still have bright red or crimson lips.

If I really wind up I think I can toss a 3/4 oz blade bait about 75, but even that takes a LOT of effort. The large majority of my casts are less than 25. I have heard guys talk about they can cast further than 100 yards. Makes me wonder if they have ever stood on a football field and seen how far 100 yards actually is.

So we have a weather pattern that has brought us snow and several inches of rain in the last week. Lakes are rising and lots of cold water and snow melt is flowing in. Water temps in most lakes are already in the lower 40’s, and we’ve had a few nights with temps down in the teens, with cloudy cold days following. Where would you you guys look for fish in this kind of situation? Logic tells me cold water sinks, and should push those fish to shallower (relatively) areas. So fishing 20-30 FOW a few weeks ago, should those bass now be moving up to 10-15 FOW? Or, would they be more likely to move out to deeper water? Im typically fishing lakes in the 200-1,000 acre size, if that matters.

Oh I love a blade bait. Two examples from early early spring this year. Thanks man, I’ll give those a try. Have to order them, nobody locally seems to have them in store.

Ned is someone I plan to fish with a lot this winter. Which brand weedless jig heads do you use? My biggest deterrent to throwing the Ned rig is it getting stuck in everything. I’ve been looking at a few different ones and just haven’t pulled the trigger yet to buy them.

Had one heck of a weekend! Started Friday going back to the same river as last weekend chasing smallmouth, but this time took some trout gear. Well the smalls were uncooperative, and so were the trout to some extent. I think they’ve seen every lure out there, so I did some digging around in my little tackle box and came up with a creation that I was hoping would get the smallies to eat. They still wouldn’t! Turned out the trout loved it! Caught a half dozen stock size rainbow and brook trout on it, and then I found some big girls! 18” brook trout. New PB! Caught another small rainbow and then not even 30 minutes later... 19” Brook trout! New PB round 2! I was stoked on the first one and was almost too excited to fish anymore after the second! Beautiful mountain scenery, small stream and awesome views with super clear blue water, capped off with some big trout that I was not expecting or even trying to target. Saturday we were out again chasing big bass on Briery. Cloudy day, 46° water, storm front coming in, we were expecting good fishing... Did not turn out that way. Spent the first few hours of the day just looking for a bite. Finally found a fish in the 10-15 foot depth range. Nice 2.5 lber. Spent another hour almost in that area and couldn’t find another bite, so moved on and kept trying some key areas, but kept coming up short. Finally around 3:00 I managed to hook into another 2.5lber with a crankbait. And about 5 casts later got my big of the day on the same crankbait. 21”, 5lbs on the nose. Just above the freezing mark and cloudy all day, made the struggle bus that much worse. But a solid fish capped off the day again!

When you go to a river looking for smallmouth and they won’t eat... Turns out, trout eat dinger worms too! It’s actually not the first trout I’ve caught this year on a dinger. But it is the biggest, and my PB rainbow! 17.5” My only catch of the day. Those teeth were scary sharp!

Hungriest bass ever?!? Have seen pics of that with other species (bluegill, crappie, etc) stuck in the bass’ mouth, but not another bass! Great job on the save!

The Yum Dinger has become my new go-to worm lure. Tex-posed, Texas rigged, wacky, neko, shakey head, doesn’t matter, it catches fish. Also caught several big bass this year on it. There’s a time and a place for it, but it just flat out works.

Put a new PB in the boat today!!! My buddy’s been working hard for this fish for a long time! 8.5lbs, 24” I had to play net man on this one, and we were both pumped to bring in a Giant first fish of the day! Rest of the day was an absolute grind. Only three fish total between us. Can’t complain too much for the first fish out of a new lake! We were also the only boat on the water from sunrise to 3pm. One other boat put in, and then a few brave kayakers hit the water just as the wind picked up to 15-20mph and chopped the place up big time. 43° water and less than 3 foot visibility. They were on the bottom, and we could find an occasional school, but just could not get them to eat. Except the important one!

I do a fair amount of bank fishing as well. I fish a couple smaller lakes that have relatively poor bank access, lots of overgrown brush and woody areas that make it hard to get around on foot, and still have some luck with the techniques I described above. I went out to one on Sunday for a few hours and knew the bass should be in the 5-10ft range. Only caught one, but got several other bites in that depth. All on some sort of structure or drop-off bank. No activity anywhere deeper or sallower than that, except some bluegill that were cruising around mid lake pecking stuff on the surface in late afternoon. Rivers have gone cold and those fish will be on the move to their deep (10+ feet) wintering holes. You can probably still find a few that are on the move, because they'll still eat if you can get a bait in front of them. If you can find or know where any of those big deep holes are, some type of soft plastic worked slow on bottom will get you a bite. Also remember, colder fish = slower fish, and they're probably not going to use the energy to chase down a bait that's moving fast.

Are you fishing lakes? ponds? rivers? Most of our rivers are or have been mud for like 2 months, and they're almost impossible to fish because of the low visibility and dangerously high current. If you're fishing ponds try finding shallower areas near feeder streams or drain inlets where there is light current bringing in fresh water. Fish tend to sit on the edges of the current and feed on things being washed into the pond. Dark colors creature baits with action/flappers or shakey head worms. Start casting up shallow and working your way out deeper. Working slow baits on the bottom is the only way I've gotten bit for the last month or so, except one dink on a squarebill that I was running painfully slow, and one random 2lber suspended 2ft under the surface in 20FOW. Pretty sure I landed the spinner bait on that ones face. That was also 59 degree water, most of our smaller bodies of water have dropped into the mid-upper 40's now. If your water is colder, focus on bottom structure. Wood, rock, or any deeper transition areas that may still have green vegetation.

I'm in my third year of not being able to break through the 6lb category. Still have time this year! But pickins are gettin slim. My 5 biggest have me around 32lbs. All LMB.

Usually a baitcast reel with the same ratio as a spinning reel will bring in less line per handle revolution. Not actual numbers but just as an example, If a 5.5:1 spinning reel brings in 27" of line, a baitcast may only bring in 22" of line, but the baitcast retrieve will vary more depending on the size of the spool and how much line is out. You can usually find this on the spec sheet for the reel. I tend to like Baitcast reels with 7:1 or higher ratio for most things except crankbaits. For most 10+ft cranks I like a 6.5:1 reel. I will run a squarebill at certain times on an 8:1, but deeper diving crankbaits need a lower ratio or you just hurt yourself trying to reel them.

Congrats man! Time for a replica mount and stick that chatterbait on the wall with her!

Looks like my 9lber!

Nice job man! Fishing in below freezing temps is definitely a challenge, especially when it’s in that early season cold snap and you’re not used to it!

Fishing here has been sllllllllooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww for me this fall. A turd ton of rain has literally flooded and turned over almost every lake that’s within 6 hours of here. We went from late summer fishing to almost winter fishing in a week. After being skunked or nearly skunked on the last few trips I did manage to catch 5 over the weekend. My biggest was around 3.5. One dink on a squarebill, the rest on Texas rigged soft plastics dragging bottom super slow. Feelin the crunch now, seems like the rest of this year is flying by, and running out of time to get on some more big girls before true winter hits.

Nice fatty there! I’ve been to that lake once. Got skunked. Hope you did well in the tourney!

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve blanked on that lake. This does seem to be the time of year to fish it though!