Pat Brown

Pro tip: contrary to popular ancient wisdom to lubricate your knots - don’t - it absolutely weakens your knots tremendously. Seen way too many YouTube videos and had enough big fish break me off to say never again for lubricating my knot. Just get it lined up and slowly cinch it down snug - that seems to yield the most consistent knots that dont fail many pounds early. I know - sounds crazy but trust me - don’t lubricate your knots!

Oh right food we don’t like - I’ve got a knee jerk reaction to raw oysters - *shivers* and the worst part is my whole family loves em. 🤢 Ocean boogers for everyone but me please!

I’ll be feverishly pursuing the NC state record rock bass this year thanks to it’s inclusion - get ready @gim !

Strike King Hybrid Hunter Shallow and jr shallow, strike king KVD wakebait, bomber shallow A, CL8 baits might mouse.

My best worm trailer on a flipping jig has always been the mag speed worm/senko. I just save old worms for both. Hot tip - the speed worm gets flapper ripped and doesn’t kick but that remaining flap is a great dead action beaver tail style attractant on the fall still. Also you take it off completely and then it’s basically a fatter senko style trailer. I have tried ribbon tails on jigs and the tail always seems to get fouled up in the skirt and weed guard and the semi exposed hook point. I’m sure it would work fine but I think for that look I’d just go for a punch skirt on a t rig ribbon tail.

I tie the double SDJ for heavy jigs and baits that weigh more than 2 oz and the single SDJ for everything else. Palomar with braid. The double SDJ is annoying to tie somewhat but when you get it right it’s 120% strength.

When it’s super cold I’ve done really well on the zoom speed craw as a casting jig trailer and as a Texas rig. Both the magnum and regular size have caught me public lake bass over 7 lbs in the cold water. I can’t pinpoint what makes them bite it but it seems to work very well on shell bars near rock on channel swing banks on or near points with good sunlight for me.

One time I made a cast at about 5 am from the back of a pocket across the front of a dock with a lipless crank bait on a freshly spooled reel - sun was just beginning to light up the sky - birds were starting to chirp - ducks flying across the sky - wait wha…..my line hasn’t landed - oh my - one of the ducks flying across the sky took about half my fresh spool before he realized what was happening and let go of my red eye shad. He’s awful lucky I didn’t knee jerk set the hook in the low light! My son had a giant nutria annihilate his frog at about the same time of day on a different occasion and he rose vertically out of the pond with the frog in his mouth and we thought we were in the middle of a horror movie together for about 1.2 seconds! 😂😂😂😂

Thank you kindly.

Sounds like you’re getting into the swing! Don’t sleep on the jerkbait or the lipless - both seem to work wonders when the fish are active around here!

Rest in peace Tom - you truly were one of the all time greats - I learned volumes from you as I’m sure generations to come will as well. Thanks for your kindness and generosity and I hope you get to fish with your son now.

Merry Christmas backatcha! And to everyone here - here’s to lots of big bass in 2026 (and maybe even what’s left of 2025 😎👍😜)

Probably some micro climate stuff too. I feel like the weather in Greensboro is often different from Durham or Charlotte for example.

I say the same thing every single solstice to Meagan and Jake: “Hey guys you know what this means right? More daylight every day from now til mid June 😍😍😍” They’re like thanks nerd dad. 😂😂😂

Finesse is awesome when it’s what they want and sometimes even going to crappie size lures can yield pretty wild bass fishing success. I think you’re on the right track by wanting to use more finesse presentations at a pressured spot - I still consider a lot of big line and big rod and reel presentations to be finesse though. Punching and flipping and pitching and casting jigs and plastics are definitely right at the intersection of power and finesse and then there’s stuff like hollow frogs and floating worms and flukes etc and all of that stuff to me can be very finesse also. To me, finesse is an approach more so than a size or type of bait I think is what I’m grabbing for and you can do finesse with a lot of “power baits” and also you can power fish the snot out of some “finesse baits”. I do both and everything in between depending on what’s working or not working and everything seems to have a time and a place especially for the bigger fish!

Your favorite bigger swimbait is worth a shot. Jigs with swimbaits seem to catch giant bass for me.

Meagan actually did a quick edit of the biggie a couple days ago and here’s the catch! Gotta love when they make a nice run right when you got them in range! https://youtube.com/shorts/O3cO3PfP_Ew?si=vF1p1VxvZ7SbTXUV

I’d say it depends - when I’m really hunting a big fish that I’m confident is there - it’s a very big part. When I’m scouting or doing opportunistic recon - chuck n’ winding - I care a little less about it. If I’m fishing a lily pad flat on a pressured lake mid day in the summer time I won’t even bother fishing it if I’m not feeling up to the task of being stealthy. sometimes I’m on the water to hang with my dog and my wife and my son and enjoy the weather and fish are just a bonus. Sometimes I’ve got my warpaint on.

Found a nice one yesterday at sunset after a long cold snap where I struggled a lot. Two nights ago it rained and went up to 50 all evening and the following day. Yesterday was windy and in the 50s with bright sun and they were up and about. Caught her in 2 feet of water pumping a lipless! basically ready to pop with eggs here in late December on the new moon at the grass pond.

Awesome @Choporoz - I committed a lot of time to blade bait today fishing it about every place and way I could think of during the time I had available and couldn’t get a single bite! I did enjoy the blade bait because of how far I could cast - that alone made the trip productive because I mapped out even more of the bottom at the grass pond I am fishing at. I don’t want to dead stick ever but there’s times when it works and they seem to be the times usually when nothing else works - I completely agree that it’s a tall order without absolute certainty of fish nearby but it has worked for me at times when nothing else would. Honestly the slowest I can usually muster it a drag stop drag drag stop cadence at best and even then I’m usually burning it in after a few feet retrieving the bait - but I have been surprised enough times picking backlashes out or checking my phone or helping my son rerig to warrant considering it a viable presentation sometimes - there’s lots of presentations that aren’t my absolute favorite but I like them all plenty when they work. 🙂 Unfortunately nothing is working for me - blade bait was fun and I will definitely throw it in lieu of the lipless more this winter - maybe tomorrow I’ll try a spinnerbait - those have certainly worked for me in the 40s during frontal stuff. Maybe I’ll bring my ultralight and my inline spinners and my underspins and my jig head minnow baits and go back to crappie fishing for them - it was working before the cold snap.

I absolutely need to throw a blade bait more often when it’s cold - seems wildly productive for so many people - I am very experienced fishing a lipless crankbait - I have thrown blade baits but I’ve never really committed to them - how much overlap is there in terms to eliciting a strike? On the grass ponds we have a lot of sunfish, crappie and golden shiners - the grass lake - a lot of perch, sunfish, crappie, golden shiners and gizzard shad.

Sending this to Ken Duke! 😂😂😂

@Team9nine - I always love when you take the time to reply. I can see why you’re always on them every time you go out. Would love an opportunity to be in a boat with you someday - we aren’t too far apart - we should make it happen! I’d love to take you out on my little deep grass lake with 11 lb bass swimming around in it! I am really glad you replied because you fish in my backyard and know what you’re doing - almost everything you have said aligns with a lot of my suspicions! I figured the biggest key is gonna be finding the isolated patches that are productive in lakes that have grass and isolating the depth they want to be at +/-. Bait: this is one I have consistently struggled with when it gets super cold. I have been out with folks with far more advanced electronics than I posses and they tell me they can see shad “carpeting the bottom” in areas and on 2D and even side imaging it is very difficult to make out. Occasionally I will see what looks like a lot of fish suspending a few hundred meters from the dam outflow but I have never been bitten fishing these ghost returns. I was ALWAYS confident the places with healthy grass would be better in the cold due to the grass holding heat and producing oxygen and probably keeping fish *relatively* shallow when temps plummet - I fish a couple really really good small public ponds with healthy grass - one of which I have found the deeper water and even found adjacent hard edges that transition to grass in 5-6 feet around fishing piers and islands and the dam - I have tried a lot of things on the bottom and can’t get bit on the bottom which is sad because I feel like when I’m struggling I usually can fish the bottom and get something to bite. Before the cold snap a few nights ago - I was doing very well fishing jig head minnows - but crappie sized ones 🙂. Maybe this afternoon when I go back to fish the melted ice/freshly warmed water from the 50+ degree rain that’s gonna fall - I will just commit to crappie jigs and see what happens. I tried a 2” swim bait on a ball jig head yesterday slow and fast and low and middle and high deep and shallow around and through the remaining grass adjacent to deep water around birds and couldn’t buy a bite - I’ll tell ya - that tiny ned sounds like not a terrible idea - would need to downsize my line a lot to make that work though. @F14A-B I have caught some giant fish on full living rubber skirt jigs 1/2 oz with chunks but usually for me it’s after it just starts to warm a degree or two and the big girls and trying to spawn that very first time in the cold muddy water when that works the best for me. I will try dragging on around the hard edges next to the grass lines and see what shakes out. I think until I get something much more powerful for electronics I’ll skip fishing my big open water lakes with zero grass. Sounds like I’ll be miserable fishing those until I can follow gizzards around in real time etc. My experience is that grass lakes fire hard much earlier in the spring and I’m gonna assume that means I probably will be rewarded if I stick with it through the cold months and then mix in my wood and rock spots as it warms up a little bit more.

Yeah dead sticking is something that seems to always work when there are a significant amount of fish around for me - it’s my least favorite way to fish but I’m so curious about these cold water fish, I’ll try anything. To me it’s like the dead of summer - very tough to get bites at all so dead sticking suddenly becomes very effective for a period of time where it feels like the fish have stopped biting everything. In the summer you can find fish that will bite other stuff more easily but in the winter I feel like the list of presentations that works well gets really small - my hunch is that winter here behaves similarly with its own quirks. I have been fishing lots of reaction baits for weeks and I’m fairly convinced I’m missing tons of fish and confusing myself at this point by not slowing down substantially (if that’s what the fish want). The big problem with slowing down when there’s no fish around is it can falsely kill your confidence even worse when you aren’t getting bites - hence the concept behind this thread - sounds like protected areas with softer bottom and clearer water and some good cover with steeper banks could be very good ideas and checking them between 12-4 pm seems smart at this point in the year. For what it’s worth I agree with most everything being said here - in general bass seem like they go for middle of the road presentations a LOT but I can’t seem to make those work when it’s super cold. I’ve tried very fast a lot the past couple weeks so I figure I need to find them and then slow down a lot and maybe catch one or two small ones even just to get a feel for where they are.

any tips on where to fish these presentations in the super cold months? What to look for? Thank you! This is very very helpful @Reel thank you. I like that you said “no current” because that certainly narrows down fishable water a lot on most days.