Pat Brown

Well. The title says it all. I'll start. ? At one of my favorite fishing holes, there is a laydown I often like to pitch jigs into and one day I went out there armed with a brand new really pretty jig and a couple poles ready to walk the bank and do some bass hunting. When I cast in there and started slowly moving my jig back I felt a spongy feeling and the tip start to load up. Well, after a magnificent hookset, I realized somebody else had been using my favorite spot and apparently had been using some really high test power pro braid around wood and apparently they decided to just break off their line with both ends creating a clothes line basically across the whole strike zone. Needless to say I was bummed and a bit angry, mainly on account of ruining a fishing spot and just leaving it there. I remembered I had a spool with some braid in my tackle back and I tied one end to a hook with a weight really quickly and tossed it into the water where my lure and line sat stuck. I snagged the braid and busted the mess up out of there and got my lure back. A trick I have used more than once since then bank fishing. Next is my lucky War Eagle sunfish colored double gold Indiana blade spinnerbait. I don't know what it is, but that spinnerbait catches me fish. I can fish it through anything. I love it. Anyway, I was fishing at my local pond and cast it near the boat house. It somehow managed to wedge itself between a concrete slab and some wood right up against the side. It was my first cast and it was pitch black and about 6 am and I was really upset I was fixing to lose my favorite spinnerbait. Nobody was around so in I went. Shoes and pants legs and cold water in the dark. Thankfully I knew from many days fishing jigs that it's only about 2 feet deep next to the dock. Still have that War Eagle spinnerbait. Alright whatcha got?

Honestly I would like to think I have not given up on any technique, but I don't really throw jerk baits a lot.

Not enough but probably too much also! ?

Almost certainly gonna be a jig.

When bass are hunting and ambushing bluegill, it's really hard to beat a 1/2 oz jig with a bulky trailer. I like a siebert brush jig and a rage menace or bug a lot. When it's cold I do a chunk or beaver. Green pumpkin and dip the tails in chartreuse. Bluegill dead ringer.

I'm pretty much exclusively using the Siebert Outdoors spinnerbait at this point. They are very very well built and have super nice components and they look amazing in the water. They're gonna get a workout in March!

Alabama Spot Hunter, might need to buy a bigger boat and start guiding buddy! You're a hammer! You might have also just sold me a Damiki Blade ? So awesome to see those big offshore fish hats off! One of these days I'll learn how to make one note. Got out on the Jon boat for a little while yesterday and got skunked. All I could find was shad carpets at 17 ft off the main lake points. Couldn't seem to find an active bass. Surface temps were 42° which usually makes the shallow bite really tough here. Oh well! Here's hoping the string of 55° days we got going this week gets those ST moving back towards 50° again. That was a lot of fun there for a little while! ?

My lake has a dam outflow with 17 feet of water sitting in front of it and in front of the dam are large concrete cylindrical support pilings. I have vertically jigged large bass pitching around these pilings and 17 feet is as deep as it gets on my home lake. I'd think it's probably a great place to pitch a jig!

I think here in NC, one must commit fully to finesse and go very small and slow or go BIG and fast. I have poor circulation so I prefer the latter on my bodies of water. During the spring and summer I am MUCH more content to slow down and go small. Especially dead of summer.

This is exactly been my experience so far. I also have caught well with a chunk hung on the back and a piece of plastic threaded onto the hook to bulk it up. But always living rubber and always a big big profile and a heavier jig seem to be catching fish. A lot of what I've been doing this winter has been bank fishing local pond that holds quite a few big bass and it's about 7 ft deep out in the middle. Most of the way around it with a lot of it being 1-2 ft deep. Silted in hard bottom. It's actually an interesting specimen because it's stocked primarily with northern strain and they actually fire up in the winter time and pretty much shut down in the summer time on this pond and on the lake that I like to jon boat fish. I actually find that it's more Florida strain and the catching is really good in the summer, but it's also pretty good in the winter if you can find where they're stacked up! The pond has one steeper side with more shoreline cover and then a south facing 'rip rap wall' that terminates at the out flow point. I have caught many large bass all over the pond. My theory being that it's so small they're kinda everywhere. Thanks for all your jig fishing wisdom WRB. Learned a lot of what I do from what you have written over the years!

I use living rubber with silicon mixed in on most of them. The brush mata style Siebert brush jigs are what I throw 90% of the time. I do throw all silicon skirts for swim jigs and finesse jigs but honestly I try to be as adaptable to the conditions and mood and personality as I can. I like living rubber when it's cold because I find it has nice secondary action while letting it sit still. I also like that it bulks the jig up and slows the rate of fall. I'm primarily referring to times that the trailer action being impeded by the length of skirt strands and how perhaps in colder months, this could actually work in our favor. I think weird stuff to myself when I'm not getting any bites and I'm freezing cold by the pond ?

The chigger craw definitely achieves a rage craw profile without the flapping and I like those. I typically just use the trailer the conditions call for and try to make the profile and fall rate match up to what the bass seem to be wanting, but I do like to tinker and experiment. This time of year I usually hang or thread a super chunk or big salty chunk depending on how big a profile I'm trying to achieve. I noticed that I had a few stray rubber strands preventing my rage craw claws from flapping on the retrieve and it just got me thinking is all. Don't got much action when the skirt is just a hair too long! ?

Yeah I use all of these. I just noticed that when the skirt is 'left long' it kinda prevents the rage claws from flapping but the profile is definitely different from a trimmed back skirt regardless. I definitely get bit more on trailers that don't kick in the winter but if the skirt is juuuuust long enough to stop the claws, you might be able to enjoy the rage profile in colder water without it kicking as violently. I have been using full skirts and living rubber all winter either way, I do finesse jigs more in the post spawn around here.

So the going theory is 'go small, slow down, low action trailer' when it gets very cold. People also say 'i like to trim my skirt so that I can get the full action out of my rage craw' So I got to thinking, and maybe some of y'all have tried this, maybe in the winter, you can throw a rage craw....if the skirt is long enough to stop the claws...? I don't know if this is revolutionary or anything but maybe save people a few bucks/be a neat way to adapt 'action' trailers to colder water.

Thought I snagged a beaver for a second ?

Sorry about the image quality but I had to get it to where it would post! Pre spawn 6 lber on the Siebert Outdoors Brush jig 1/2 oz in Sunfish with a Blue Shad Zoom big salty chunk on the back. Caught her at 6 am in 1 FOW. Hit it on the fall. Happy pre spawn from NC!

Clunn, Brauer, Nixon, Martin, Houston, Parker, Swindle, Evers, Castledine, Van Damme, Biffle, Blaukut, Hackney, Christie, Cox, Daniels Jr, Latimer, Stefan, Schulz, Poche, Welcher, Wheeler, Connell....and on and on. Learn so much from all these guys. And you guys! -Pat

At my local pressured pond, occasionally the old sticks show up for their once every few months 'walk n cast' and I will chat with them. They will tell you all about how in the winter the bass always set up here or there and assure you that's where they are. Then they'll point down towards the water intake/shallow muddy side and way 'never bass in there during the winter' And they'll fish their high percentage spots and get skunked and say 'guess they aren't biting' Maybe the bass finally figured out you're walloping on their faces when it gets cold and that muddy shallow side is safe? Hard to say, but I'm gonna start fishing that dead side a bit more til spring after reading this thread! ?

7 lb largemouth on November 8th 2022 at 7 pm in 1 ft of water on a 1/4 oz Siebert Outdoors Brush mata jig in black and blue with a blue zoom chunk on the back. Caught it at my incredibly pressured small pond, so I was proud. Prior to that was a 7 lb post spawn female I doodled out from under a dock with a wacky rigged senko in the rain in May!

I feel I am someone who really likes to play around with my local fish, especially when they seem to be active. But if you told me I was gonna be limited to a jig/chatterbait/senko/crankbait for the rest of my life and no more tackle, I'm confident my catch rates would improve substantially! ? Look at Seth Feider! Fish a few things you KNOW will work and you tend to fish them more confidently and present them better. But dang it I gotta know what a big girl in a tree thinks of a dark sleeper anyway! ?

So far this winter all my bass seem to come of of structure in shallow water directly adjacent to deep water near lots of bait. One interesting anecdotal piece of information from my own local resevoir: It is a *well known fact* that in the winter bass love the sunny rip rap bank near the dam....except on my lake. On my down imaging I haven't seen a whiff of life all winter anywhere within 300 ft of the dam. During the summer I'd catch a 5 + every trip out on the rip rap. On my NC waters, they all seem to congregate on the shady bluff opposite the sunny dam where there is more complex cover and structure. Most important of all seems to be the bait for my catch rates this winter. -Pat

I'm a sucker for those caves formed by overhanging trees in the summer time. Every time I skip a bait in there I'm CONFIDENT I'm gonna get a lake record. When I see the first 4 ft of a trunk + roots sticking up out of the water at the bank and the rest of the tree disappears into the lake, I often fish every inch till I figure out where the bass are gonna be holding. I usually catch my biggest fish on these mostly submerged trees where only a LITTLE bit is sticking up. Bonus points if it's sticking off a point into deep water and has rock nearby. Rip rap gets me every time. I've had days where I caught 3 5 lbers in 2 hours just pitching a football jig to the water edge on rip rap near the dam and hop it down the rock face. Usually a decisive THUNK and the fish swims AT you! Pretty fun stuff! Structure I wanna get better at: Submerged offshore brush. Grass. Pads. Docks. Bridges.

Hey there y'all. Long time lurker. First time poster. Got started bass fishing when I was able to hold a pole with my dad back in the 90s. We always fished rubber worms and crankbaits and did well enough but also fished for catfish and panfish for fun. I caught a handful of bass in the 2 lb range but mostly dinks and mostly didn't catch many. Fast forward to 2021 and I got bit by the bug really bad when I started working from home. I tend to get pretty methodical about my passions and bass fishing is no different. I committed myself to learning bass behavior starting in March of last year and have been soaking up every last drop of information I can find and I have been out on the water any time I am not working or dealing with family commitments. I primarily fish two local lakes, one that has lots of grass and very clear tannic water and one that has no vegetation and is very stained and primarily is all about shallow wood and rock. I also fish a couple small public access ponds that hold giants that are VERY tough but rewarding. Last year I caught probably close to 50 bass over 4.5 lb and my current PB is 7 lb (from one of the super tough ponds!) and I caught it on a 1/4 oz black and blue Siebert brush jig with a blue Zoom super chunk trailer in about 1 foot of water at 7 pm in November of 2022. My favorite ways to catch bass are on jigs and soft plastics much like Catt and WRB : ) I also very much like lipless and square bill crankbaits, spinnerbaits, bladed jigs and Shakey heads. I want to get better at fishing topwater this spring/summer. It seems to be the one thing I can get bit but can't land them so I'm gonna try to improve that when it warms up! I consider myself first and foremost a student of the bass and then of my local waters specifically and then beyond that I consider myself very very ignorant and eager to learn! thanks for this awesome resource for guys like me completely ate up with chasing the green fish! -Pat