Wintertime-River Smallmouth Edition

[Al Agnew]

It's probably a confidence thing, but while I know that big smallies can be caught in late autumn and early spring on bigger baits, I feel like in the middle of the winter with water temps from the low 40s downwards, smaller is better. I KNOW it's a confidence thing with hair jigs...I have more confidence that I can catch fish in cold water on them than anything else I throw, although I'll try the other stuff I mentioned before, and sometimes it works better. The hair jigs are just my default winter lure.

[Mitch f]

No doubt Al, that's pretty much all I use when the water temps get below 45 or so. I've been trying my small craw as a stand alone as well as a hair jig trailer. They both work, can't seem to tell a big difference. The smaller craw is only 2 3/4" anyway

[Mitch f]

Here are my standard 2 color hair jigs for the winter season

[Chief Grey Bear]

The biggest smallmouth I've ever seen caught in Missouri was on a 4" brown Chomper DT hula grub full garlic scent on a warm November day on the Gasconade.

I disagree on the scents though, I believe they help by causing the fish to hang on a little longer than usual and possibly cause a fish that is trailing after a bait in a lazy way to go ahead and commit. as far as the Chomper stand up heads, those are the worst hanging up jig heads ever.

That is great.

Was it caught in the first few cast?

[Mitch f]

That is great.

Was it caught in the first few cast?

Can't remember, I'm getting old....... starting to get hair on my back and grumbling all the time...low T I guess. I need to go work out my "core"

[Chief Grey Bear]

Can't remember, I'm getting old....... starting to get hair on my back and grumbling all the time...low T I guess

Dammit Mitch!!! Now you play along or you don't play at all!

[Guest]

I like the Yum F2 scent, its got a real nice crawdad smell, but tends to stain my baits red.

The bang crawfish is good too.

I think it makes a difference on bigger bass.

Plus I've caught lots of drum and catfish by accident with the scent.

Mitch, those hair jigs phenomenal!

[Guest]

deleted

[Mitch f]

I like the Yum F2 scent, its got a real nice crawdad smell, but tends to stain my baits red.

The bang crawfish is good too.

I think it makes a difference on bigger bass.

Plus I've caught lots of drum and catfish by accident with the scent.

Mitch, those hair jigs phenomenal!

Thanks guys,

Charles... I like Yum as well but my favorite is Yamamoto Mega Strike gel

[RSBreth]

I get the hair jig bite going sometimes in Winter but the slowly swimming grub/float and something/suspending jerkbait bite is more reliable and usually has a bigger fish on the other end, too.

I was going to add more last night but had to take care of something else - plenty of info about hair jigs, but the suspending jerkbait thing - that's really my thing, and I've done really well on them. Here I'll plagiarize myself with an excerpt from an old article - I don't have the time to type it out so cut and paste with an edit:

Like the original post and question, finding winter fish after poking around a river for a year or two shouldn’t be very hard. Big, deep, slow pools, mostly. Now the trick. After several days of warmer weather and/or bright sunlight and/or a warm rain that didn’t muddy up the water fish can be a little more active. Sometimes. Maybe. It’s not exact. Bass in our Ozark rivers like mixed rock and wood cover in winter, and little current. Not totally still water necessarily, but very little current. The ideal way to present a suspending lure to fish hanging around submerged wood cover in current is to anchor on the inside (shallower side) of the pool and make casts across the pool about 90-degrees to the flow of water. If you’re familiar with “swinging” streamers on a fly rod, or doing the same with spinners or spoons for trout, it’s about the same. The difference is the current will be very slow, and the natural buoyancy of the lure will keep it place in the water column instead of the force of current. You want the lure to slowly drift right past or over a submerged log or rock, and keep your line almost tight to the lure the entire time. You may have to feed a little line sometimes to keep it drifting along a more or less straight line, or let the line pull tight and then drop the rod tip, repeating every so often to effect a “swing” type retrieve. Either can work. I use high visibility (yellow) superline with a fluorocarbon leader to help with strike detection, but a long (8-foot or so) leader so the bright main line isn't close to the fish. A Bass will often swim out of cover and stare at a lure, drifting along with the current for some distance before deciding to take swipe at it. I’ve seen the line do everything from the obvious twitch and start peeling away quickly to slowly come tight after 3 or 4 seconds, so you never know how fish will hit the lure. I like the smaller (two hook) suspenders when specifically targeting Smallies, but in rivers where bigger fish are common or there's also a chance at Largemouths (like the James and Finley) I'll use the bigger three hook size lures. I like the older Rogues and Husky Jerks, but also use XRaps, and Spro Mcsticks, a favorite was the old XCalibur XS4, but the new EEratic Shad is good, too. I like Clown or brighter colored lures on sunny days, and the more translucent colors for cloudy days. I'll try the three Rapala colors of Silver, Silver Blue, or Tennessee Shad any time, I've caught a lot of fish the past couple of years on the Tennessee Shad when they weren't hitting some of the more "modern" lures in more realistic colors.