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.