Pat Brown

Okay so to be fair, I think in NC we have a LOT of warm fronts and harshe cold fronts. Last year we had our lakes and ponds freeze hard for 2 weeks in the middle of winter!!!! I have never seen that happen in my whole life living here. It was followed by a 50° rainy warm front that basically moved fish up shallow to spawn in January. Surface temps stabilized after the thaw and after the warm fronts, fishing slowed down for a while, but there was a period where you could tell they were being 'affected' by the front. I will say, I think you're probably more likely to see results on a body of water without much relative depth at all to begin with. The whole water column gets affected by these fronts a whole lot more. Another thing I have been thinking about is the fact that even though your lure seems to disappear sometimes when it enters the water, there can often be much clearer water beneath that cloudy haze floating near the top. In instances where the water is mostly gin clear and you get muddy heavy flow with a front, that muddy water is still going to be relatively much cleaner than muddy water on a river system lake. I think when the water gets too clear, fish get very weary of predators also. I think bigger fish in shallower bodies of water may seek out the stain/mudline if only for the cover it provides at these times when water clarity is exceptionally clear AND there is no shoreline vegetation alive for them to relate to. Still lots of great perspectives and pieces of wisdom and experience being shared here. I do think that it's important to define muddy water as it relates to the mean clarity AND warm as it relates to general seasonal bottom temps for YOUR body of water regardless!

I'm beginning to see some of the clearest water I've ever seen in my bodies of water that I fish here in central NC as winter settles in and surface temperatures fall rapidly with waning daylight hours and falling night time lows. This has got me wondering and theorizing somewhat on the topic of 'cold muddy water' It's often seen as the kiss of death to bass fisherman. Impossible to get bites out of lethargic fish that can't see well etc etc etc We have all heard it. But this got me thinking about the paradox: muddy water warms the fastest. Hmmmm Bass love warmth during cold times. So I'm starting to form guesses about this and maybe some of you can offer experience or theories of your own to contribute: There are TIMES when muddy water is your friend when the water is 'cold' I'm betting if you have a stable warming trend for ~3 days with minimal wind and perhaps some rain that's ~10° warmer than the surface temps around the lake, it might get bait fish moving into the backs of creeks especially if the sun is hitting them for prolonged periods towards the end of the day.... Another time I could see cold muddy water being extremely beneficial is when targeting extremely large pre-spawn females. I would THINK the muddy water would make them easier to trick AND they're still going to be gorging fairly non discriminately at this time of year right? Wouldn't you want to find that cold muddy water then? Should be a fun primer/discussion.

You can't fix people. The Walmart parking lot puddles around here get pounded whether I'm catching 8 lbers or not.....the good news is the winter is just about here and puddle pounders don't like wearing coats or standing in the cold. 😎😎😎

I was pretty excited to cast a glide bait around some bridge piers where I saw shad schooling a previous trip but didn't bring my swimbait rod. We idled up to casting distance and killed everything and my first cast the glide bait hits the concrete bridge and explodes into lots of pieces. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Goodbye 40$. One time my son was getting on them really good on a swim jig bite and I remembered I had a perfect perch imitation swim jig in my little tackle satchel. I had recently started tying the double pitzen or 'three tag end' knot. I excitedly cut my flipping jig off and tied on my perch swim jig and cut three times and then threw my jig into the lake...unfortunately one of the three cuts I made was the main line. 😭. Goodbye 7$ Night fishing early in my night fishing days, I wasn't hip to the whole 'treble hooks in the dark are dumb' thing and lost more than a few walking topwaters and ploppers to treelines in the dark. Whoops.

There's a 1 oz rat-l-trap now too and it's enormous.

For the D Bomb, I'd get bruiser flash for shade lines/muddy water and I'd get something really simple like GP3 for clear water situations. A bag of the small and big size ought to do ya they last for a few fish in my experience and take dye very well. For the RI Beavers I like Hematoma and Spanish Fly for dirty vs clear water. I don't put too much stock in matching specific forage unless the fish give me some kinda strong reason to like a shad spawn. Grab some white beavers for that and call it a day. Some variation of black for dirty water/green for clear water/white for shad fixated bass is about all I ever use for beavers/creatures.

Missile Baits D Bomb and Baby D Bomb and the Reaction Innovations Beaver and Smallie Beaver are killer right now through about April if your water isn't frozen!

I just gotta have some family in Florida I'm forgetting. 🤣

If you have ANY living healthy vegetation remaining anywhere. Fish it. 😉

@ol'crickety I reckon I'm gonna more deliberately and methodically and exclusively finesse the whole pad field and see where that gets me. I just got antsy and excited 😝

Time to try the mini swim jig! 😝😝😝🎣🎣🎣 And a few other odds and ends 😉

I say this a lot but it's the one that didn't make it to the boat that I'm more inclined to describe: day BEFORE yesterday I hit these pads on a very short afternoon outting on a whim and on my first cast i was treated to white misty explosion maybe 4 feet wide and two feet high very near the very back of the lily pad field. I mean the biggest blow up I've ever seen ever. The sound was like dynamite. The lily pads that had been sitting barely moving all lay adrift in the pulsing current from her mass. She did have it. I did feel her pulling. Didn't get a hook in her. I wasn't ready and didn't hesitate at all and when I felt her on there, I pulled back and I felt something but came back with a shish kabob of pad leaves and stems. Not three minutes later after Meagan and Jake and I exchange whispered excitement and are getting ready to make another cast when....she breeches. Now I say she...like she was the only fish in there. Well I think she was. It is a very small patch of pads and nothing else sniffed our bait day before yesterday. But anyways...this fish was the same size class as my 11.5 and she was DARK green. The pads come to a thick point as they jut out into the main lake and that is where she breeched. She breeched vertically and all but the bottom of her tail came up for a split second. She was close to a foot wide from pectoral fin to pectoral fin. Her belly was NOT fat at all yet in fact she appeared to have spawned late a second time judging by how concave she appeared. She was the darkest fish I've ever seen that was a bass. I'm just thankful I got a bite out of her. We slowed way down and threw the quiet and sneaky kitchen sink at the pads. Before we knew it, it was time to go. Yesterday we had more free time and made a bee line for the pads two hours before the lake closed to give us ample time to harass the fish in the small lily pad patch before closing time. I caught a fish on my first cast to a laydown outside the pads. 3 lber. 1/2 oz jig n chunk. I cast the jig JUST to the edge of the pads and catch a 2 lber. I decide, might as well go for it and pick up the buzzbait. First cast I SEE what looks like a 6+ grab and spit it faster than lightning in a pad opening 10 feet from the boat on a long cast and this gets my heart pumping. Next cast I stick the 4.5 lber. So 3 fish now in 5 minutes out of the pads for a total of 9-10 lbs and I missed a 6. The 4.5 hit with a nice low midrange heavy wet toilet bowl slurp and immediately dove to the left and felt like she practically hooked herself. I had to use muscle and 40 lb braid to winch her out of the pads but these pads truly are optimal in that they are sparse and have lots of space between each stem. Any thicker and I would have had to go in for her. All I know is I'm gonna be fishing pads in cold water with a buzzbait for the rest of my life 🥹😁😝🐟🎣

It's not a moral high ground at all. I only fish small bodies of water here in central NC. I mean I primarily fish a pair of public 5 acre city park ponds. I think it's more that I can tell you exactly where when and how I caught the fish because you won't replicate my success just because I tell you how and where and when I caught a fish. Bass just aren't that predictable or consistent and usually it's something obvious like 'i caught her around the full moon on that main lake point on a jig in deeper submerged brush' and most of the time the first thing people say is 'oh I don't fish jigs.' followed by 'i usually lose my bait whenever I work thick brush' or something like that. 'Oh you caught her on THAT side of the public pond. I usually just fish near the parking lot but thanks for the tip.' etc etc Occasionally I do give the juice to someone serious and in that sort of case I consider it a gift and rarely do they find the same success regardless. I think higher profile bass fishing states, I could see it playing out differently. Giving up waypoints to a semi pro with lots of fancy equipment seems like it could result in schools getting displaced or lure fatigue but around here, we don't have a lot of anglers like that thankfully. Mostly just pleasure anglers who don't think too hard about details. Even on a small reservoir with all the information and waypoints in the world you still gotta make them bite and I can't hold the rod and cast for everyone I give tips to and as a result I doubt my tips pan out very often. I'm confident also that most bites I've gotten are not bites that are freely given at these locations routinely. It's like wow: 'Sometimes fish feed on things around pieces of cover near main lake structure and if ya cast popular lures into said cover, you can catch them occasionally!' isn't actually nearly as damning or helpful as we think it is. 😉🎣

Been a dink fest and missed some big fish this week but finally connected with this stud on the buzzbait in some lily pads today. Been plenty of dinks but this is the first 4+ in a while and it felt oh so good.

I have enough trips where I either don't catch anything or just catch a couple but on days when I catch them well, I usually catch them very well. I have had lots of days where I get 3 bites and they're all 6 lbers. I have days where I catch 20 fish and they're all 2 lbers. Oddly enough the days where I catch around 5 fish, not too many more and not too many less tend to be my best days. If I'm on a pattern where I'm gonna get 6-7 bites all day, I'm probably on the big fish pattern on my lake and any fish over 3 lbs usually tells me I'm fishing for the bigger ones at my lakes. I don't think my averages are going to be an indicator of much but I will say I'm getting much more efficient at finding patterns on my lakes even if I don't always have the success to show it. Thankfully I fish for fun so it's all good. 🙂🎣

@papajoe222 Line choice matters a lot here. Fluorocarbon line makes it suspend or sink depending on brand and line diameter. Monofilament will make it suspend or float very slowly depending on brand and line diameter. This is half of the fun with suspending baits OF COURSE! Water temperature adds to the fun! The main thing is fish HAVE NOT seen this yet and most don't know what to do with themselves when they see a lipless just suspending in the water column for the first time.😉🎣

The Nichols Impulse and the Accent Wheeler OG and Finesse are my best producers consistently. I really like the way the blade relates to the hook and all that stuff. Seems like when fish gets it with these ones they get it good. Not as big a fan of the Buzzbaits where the blade is very close to the hook but those catch the very committed fish just fine. I have one requirement for a buzzbait trailer. It needs to be flattish and have flappers on both sides. I find this is more critical than tuning or anything else for getting it to run vertically in line. You have the bend the arm to get it to run straight. If it's straight it will run to one side. In general I'm finding white or shad pattern work best most of the time but when I'm in super heavy cover I like a more bluegill/darker color. I usually go skirt and trailer and only put a trailer hook on if a fish explodes on my bait and doesn't get it. It seems like this just happens sometimes and it's probably an indication that there's a different presentation that would work better, but I find that the trailer hook is a good idea if you're going to be covering water with a buzzbait and they're short striking.

Caught my largest fish on a spinnerbait of my life in cold muddy water 8 feet deep at the mouth of a creek in early March 3 years ago and I had a zoom curly tail worm in black grape on the back. 1/4 oz tandem silver blades with a black chartreuse skirt. She was 6 lbs.

Don't bother. They're totally useless. Giant fish don't absolutely smash them.....👀 (got this 8 lb 12 oz bass in March with the red suspending quake)

@Siebert Outdoors makes a wide variety of incredible swim jigs. You can get wire tied skirts and the color options are truly something to behold in person. That would be my recommendation without hesitation.

It is very hard to catch fish during this in between stage of the fall but it is also a great time for a big one. I'd try some weightless plastics on lighter line if you really really think there's a fish or two around the areas you have access. Another really big deal is timing. I find that the late afternoon is when the lions share of fish seem to go nuts and it's usually the sunny bank not the shady bank this time of year. If you don't see big schools of small stuff and medium sized stuff darting around in an area, I'd keep moving.

@ol'crickety I think a piece of information that I've been trying to internalize/process this year is that the most successful anglers are usually the most efficient anglers. I am trying to learn to eliminate useless patterns efficiently and find productive patterns efficiently and it seems like the inescapable conclusion is you've got to keep moving and making little changes til you dial the bite in. I've seen too much success happen due to a small change in presentation or location which really require intentional efficient experimentation. There's like an overarching seasonal narrative one must be aware of. An overarching local weather *recently* narrative one must be aware of. There's an overarching *what's to come* that seems to push and pull at fish in ways that can be patterned that one must be aware of. And then arguably the MOST important thing one must stay tuned in one WITH ALL of this in mind, is the moment. The water in front of you. The cast you just made. It's a game of very big and very small patterns that intersect and yield WILD success when you crack the code.

It's been said a lot of times here and other places but in my opinion, the colder it gets, the more important it is to just keep moving while all of this plays out. Slumps can often be a product of consistently fishing dead water and in the winter there IS a lot of dead water but when you DO find them it's usually grouped up in an area that is like a magnet to bait and bass. So one more thing I will add from my humble corner is KEEP MOVING. You don't have to burn the bank and fish sloppy. But don't stop moving til you get a bite. Go back to basics is my favorite piece of advice on the list! A fluke or a worm might require you to put the ego aside and cast something simple and slow on light line, but sometimes that's all you can do to actually catch bass and catching is more fun than casting and freezing!

I don't think it's always that I miss them so much as they aren't so sure about the bait and aren't eating it....more just kinda reluctantly nudging it in a way that I can feel. When a bass eats my jig or crankbait or Jerkbait it's almost ALWAYS gonna get hooked but I can't control the ones that aren't eating it for good intelligent reasons. I think sometimes during weird weather, fish study things more and that usually means less violent and committed strikes especially at the shallow 5 acre ponds I fish. At the lake it's less of an issue...there always seems to be a spot somewhere they're actually eating, but getting out there takes free time, of which I haven't had as much as I'd like with work and family commitments! Oh well, gonna make it that much sweeter when I run back into em! 🙂🐟

Nice fish Katy! Been a 1 -2 lber fest over here for the past couple weeks...i figure every big one that nibbles I've been missing and every little fella I manage to stick....but Jake is out of school for teacher work days tomorrow and Friday and we have had some real cold weather so I'm hoping I can catch something worth sharing soon! 🥹🥲🤣