Thread: Instead of minnows?

I fish for stripers and hybrids primarily and I fish artificial for them just about all winter. I crappie fish some but the stripers are more of what I target. The stripers are also feeding on small threadfins this time of year so I spend a good bit of my time imitating them. Keep in mind that when the water temps drop into the 40’s the shad are practically comatose and are moving very slowly. Since the water temps dipped I am getting most of my stripers breaking out my crappie rod and throwing tiny jigs and cranking them extremely slow.

The other day I saw some shad dimpling the surface up shallow in the back of a cove so I decided to throw the net on them and possibly drop them down for white perch. I made an awful throw and I didn’t think the net had opened at all but when I pulled it, it had over 100 threadfin of all sizes in it. So they are ganged up real tight and not moving much at all.

if you want to get way down with less weight, use small braid. I've got a fleet of wally marshal tight line specials and slow troll with 1.5oz and minnow. I can get to 35-40'deep and still be quite vertical with lines back a few degrees at about .5 to .7MPH. Look at the 15-20lb test braids, handy when you do snag or hang a big blue cat.

Brettw here is the hottest bait going right now.

Here are my two go to baits when fishing is tough and you need to catch fish.

[Ok it’s winter, prespawn, but after seeing a post from Jigpuller and seeing 3” inch Shad in my live well that Crappie had been feeding on, I had a thought.
Are we really stuck with moving really slowly and dragging minnows in the winter or is using a enough weight to keep a Road Runner at 30’ or 40’ a viable option? Moving at 1 mph? Covering 2 or 3 times the area.

Anyone doing this?
Thanks

The Simple answer is Yes you can, we do it on your lake all the time; most our tourneys are up there in the dead of winter, Wylie for some reason seem better longlining for us that tightlining, but we've also found that the fish like to sit in 30' of water this time of year, up to 45" of water, So as simple as I can make this we use up to 1/4oz. down to 1/6oz. in the spread of 12 rods, with 6lb test, lead, swivel, (leader!!!) jig: we set up jigs just like we would if we fish didn't use the leads. We don't run over ..7 to .8 mph but you do cover a lot of water and can fish several depths. But in a week or two it ought not matter they ought to be head up the creeks anyways and you can catch them normal way long lining.


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Thanks
You’re right soon even Oldfish, CK , Scooperdud and even the Dawgg will be able to catch something


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Brett I am sending you a pm with my cell number call me and I will answer your question. Bigdawgg I ant going to give him my secret bait lol biggrin

Brett it want let me send you a private message. Send me one and I will give you my cell number