The days are getting longer and the fish are starting to get a little more active. Where I’m fishing at right now I’m still dealing with cold muddy water. The water has been ranging anywhere from 42 to 45 degrees. I haven’t been having a whole lot of success on some of my classic wintertime favorites….the jerkbait, crank, and the jig. What I have been having success with is a spinnerbait.
The spinnerbait has always been a great bait to throw in muddy to stained water. The bait produces a tremendous amount of water displacement and vibration that makes it easy to find for the bass. Also this time of year the shad can be dying all over the place and a spinnerbait works wonders at imitating them. Continue reading ‘Early Spinnerbaiting…..’
     When you walk through the isles of a tackle store a lot of times you have to deal with the frustration of not being able to find the right skirt color combinations on spinnerbaits and jigs.  So many times this has happened to me.  You have to settle for whats available, buy jigs or spinnerbaits and then swap the skirts, or spend a lot of time looking around on-line for  baits with your favorite skirt combinations. A lot of anglers don’t know that there are tools today that exist  that make building your own skirt combinations really easy and affordable. A lot of people spend money on those 3 skirt packs that are way over priced. If you have a couple of favorite skirt color combinations that you catch a lot of fish on it is way cheaper to build your own skirts. There are several skirt building tools out there on the market.
Naked Bait Company Skirt Expander
      The Naked Bait Company skirt expander is the easiest  skirt building tool to work with and it’s what I use to build my skirts. I really like a couple of colors for my jigs skirts and spinnerbaits so what I do is get a bunch of skirt material in those colors. I catch a lot of fish on a peanut butter and jelly skirt combination and black and blue so I’m always making those skirts. A lot of times if your on a hot jig or spinnerbait bite your skirts will take a beating and its great to be able to add a fresh one in the same exact color. An added bonus is that you can make those finesse jig skirts for your jigs that you can”t find anywhere in the stores. You don’t waste as much material because you can add just a couple of strands to a collar instead of having to trim and tear up the skirts that come on your jigs. A lot of times with a football jig I like to have anywhere from 80 to 120 strands at least to give the jig that bulk and water displacement. It’s hard to find pre-made skirts with that many strands. Another thing I’ve been experimenting with here lately is inserting a couple of strands just barely in the collar to give the jig the illusion of tentacles of a crawlfish. Another thing you can do is trim up the skirts really short so that the skirt flairs a bunch giving it some more action.  Talking to some of the pro’s one of the hottest trends on the tour is building skirts to match the zoom finesse worm colors on shakeyheads.
Jason Baxter 2008 Heartland Trails Pro-Am Points Champion
    BASSEAST had a chance to catch up and talk with Missouri’s Heartland Trails Pro Jason Baxter. Jason Baxter considers Table Rock Lake to be his home lake. Last year he spent roughly 225 days on Table Rock. Jason was the 2008 Heartland Trails Pro-Am points champion. Jason is well known for his success with a jig.
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Winter action at lake Pomme de Terre, Missouri
Some of the best fishing can be had during the winter months. Wintertime fishing typically isn’t a numbers game. A lot of times you get a couple of bites a day but they are usually some nice fish. There is always that chance though that you can hit it right and load the boat in minutes. Typically my wintertime fishing centers around four different baits. The jig, jerkbait, dropshot, and a wacky rigged senko.
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