Jig a Spoon for Winter Fishing Action

Without much question, a jigging spoon ranks one of the best lures made for winter fishing, and it produces pretty much every kind of fish that ever eats shad or herring. Find a good group of baitfish near the bottom in a  wintering area, and you're apt to catch white bass, stripers, bass, catfish and more. A simple hand-poured and painted white spoon is one of Gary Dollahon's mainstay lures during the winter, and he catches pretty much everything that swims on his spoons. Dollahon looks for areas near the mouths of major creeks, where hard bends create wind protection from multiple directions and form holes that offer the baitfish and the gamefish a nice range of depths to use. The fish can be down in the channels or up on the structure, so he normally does quite a bit of looking with his electronics and drops a marker buoy before he begins fishing. Dollahon also mixes up his presentations for different situations. The video below demonstrates a "shaking" strategy that Dollahon finds especial;y productive when the water turns extra cold.

Double Trouble Jigging

White bass serve up serious winter fun, especially when you get atop a decent school and can drop directly to them with jigging lures. Not all jigging rigs and cadences are equal, though, and at times you need to come up with something a little different to tap into the best action. On a recent trip to Oklahoma, Gary Dollahon showed me a cool "shaking" technique he likes to use during the winter, and at times that was by far the best way to draw strikes. I also stumbled across a tandem rig with a spoon and a Bobby Garland Slab Dockt'R, using a little different sort of presentation. It is shown in the video below.

The video, shot by Gary Dollahon and produced by Nathaniel Samsel, is the newest on our YouTube Channel. The channel mostly features how-to videos, and we try to add at least one per week. Several are from bass pros, but we've also included saltwater, trout, ice fishing, a couple from crappie pros and now one about jigging for winter white bass. The channel is only two months old and is just approaching 1,500 total views, so we don't know a lot yet, but the crappie fishing videos have been the most popular in the early going.

Fishing Against the Wind

A serious and steady blow made for much more challenging fishing today, and the hard front clearly affected the positioning and attitudes of the fish. We still caught plenty of fish -- about 45 by my rough tally -- but that was about a third of yesterday's catch, and we jigged the same lures over the same structures.

We could see on the graph that both gamefish and baitfish were in different positions. Most bait had moved off the structure and down into the main channel. Where we did find the fish they would bite, but they never got frenzied like they did at times yesterday. Winds that blew steadily at 30 or more added obvious challenges with boat positioning and lure presentations. Still, I think the changes in the fish's behavior were more noteworthy.

I've often heard "should have been here yesterday," especially right behind a hard front. Well, this time I was there yesterday, so I know how much different it truly was and what a large impact the weather change had on the fishing.

So what will tomorrow bring?

Quit Counting ar 100

We'd been fishing about 9 seconds when I hooked my first white bass of the morning, and that fish pretty well set the pace for the day. I stopped counting at 100 fish, and we continued catching fish for another three hours or so. White bass were the main attraction, but between Gary Dollahon and me we caught seven different species of fish.

We caught almost all our fish in 30 to 40 feet of water, which is deeper than many anglers like to fish but which Gary has found to be  the prime zone for several species of fish during the winter. They were in predictable positions over structure and relating big schools of shad and very susceptible to vertical presentation. We caught everything on jigging spoons and Bobby Garland crappie baits, including Slab Doct'R and Slab Slay'R jigs. I was fishing one of Gary's hand-poured spoons with a Slab Doct'R rigged about a foot and a half above it on my line. Interesting, about 3/4 of the fish I caught on the tandem rig were on the jig. Presentations were important at times, and the fish's moods and preferences definitely changed while we were out there.

We'll take some of what we learned today and apply it to tomorrow's approach, but we'll also need to adjust for conditions, with the weather calling for colder temperatures and far more wind.

Oklahoma Fish Medley

Gary Dollahon enjoys catching any kind of fish that wants to bite, including Lake Fork largemouths like this one, but this week's quest will center on home waters in Oklahoma.

Gary Dollahon has been telling me about one of his favorite seasonal bites for a few years now, and we've finally made plans for me to travel his way and try it for myself. Gary I both enjoy catching whatever wants to latch onto the other end of a line, and that's a major part of the appeal of the brand of winter fishing that he and I will be doing. We'll be jigging for fish that pod up together when the water gets cool, and the fish that tug on the other end could range from white bass to colossal blue catfish. Fishing is still fishing, so you never know for sure, but Gary anticipates fast action from a pretty good mix of species.

Beyond being big fun, catching a variety of fish gives me a great opportunity to gather photos, videos and material for magazine stories -- and to put some Lew's rods and reels to the test! The plan also includes time chasing crappie with Bobby Garland pro Kevin Rogers, which will most likely involve some different angling approaches.

I fly to Tulsa tomorrow and will be fishing Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. As always, I'll do my best to deliver fresh reports from where I'm fishing and to convey some of what I learn, so keep an eye on my blog. I also like to add notes and photos to Twitter when I travel and invite you to follow (@jeffsamsel).

White Bass Bycatch

"Now remember, guys, we're fishing for white bass," Gary Dollahon reminded Jake Bennett and me.

Bennett, who founded Numa Optics, had distracted us from the quest with a couple of fat channel cats, and we'd all caught more than our share of yellow bass.

Then I threw us even further off course when something heavy grabbed my Big Strike jiggings spoon and after a few minutes of slow, heavy tugging, a great big largemouth did a wallowing jump and then surged down, pulling harder. Eventually Dollahon slipped a net under the big bass. The fish measured 23 3/4-inches, which is a slot fish at Lake Fork. We didn't put it on scales, but my best guess that it weighed about 8 pounds.

About 10 minutes after we took photos and went back to fishing, Dollahon forgot his own instructions and caught a 5-pound largemouth on a jigging spoon.

Eventually we did get back to fishing and actually got the white bass we needed for a photo. Mission accomplished, and we sure had fun along the way!