Sand Hollow January Fishing

I completed an afternoon of Sand Hollow January fishing over the weekend, and managed to put a few bass in the boat. It felt good to get the line stretched again. Here’s what worked for us, a map of where we fished, and some video footage with tricks on how we got them to bite. Hopefully, you can use this info to go “Krak” a few yourself.

Sand Hollow January Fishing

My dad audibly laughed at me when I told him for my birthday I wanted to come down and do some bass fishing at Sand Hollow. It kind of sucks having a January birthday, but at least I could use it as an excuse to head to St. George and try to “krak” the code on bass fishing in the winter. With the cold water and the bass metabolisms slowing way down, it is notoriously hard sometimes to get bites. Dauntless, I gorged everything I could read on the subject of bass fishing in the winter, and headed out with an armful of tactics to try on the beasts.

If you put your mind to it, things can happen. We wound up with 6 solid bites and 3 bass in the boat at the end of our afternoon of fishing. We found some things that seemed to work decently. In hind sight you wonder how many you would’ve actually caught if you did what you discovered in the beginning. For your help this is my hind sight to put to work, and hopefully it will produce for you as it did for us in the notoriously tough conditions of winter.

Sand Hollow January Fishing Conditions

We fished on Sand Hollow Reservoir on Saturday January 23rd from 1:45 – 5:00pm. Only a little over 3 hours of fishing, but totally worth it in my book. Here were the conditions for us on our excursion.

Weather

Air Temprature 52 degrees, Overcast Cloudy Day.

Wind

0-5 mph, flat calm all afternoon.

Water Temprature

42 – 43 Degrees.

Water Clarity

Lightly Stained, Visibility only about 6 – 8 feet compared to the normal crystal clear conditions on this lake.

Maps, Techniques, Seasonal Patterns, and  everything  for Bass Fishing Sand Hollow

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Sand Hollow January Fishing Spots

Here are the different places we fished, and what we found at each place. The red lines are the spots we fished. Click on them to find the details of each place.

Best Baits on January Trip

I had an army of baits lined up to test in this quick afternoon of fishing. I tried some hair jigs, drop shoting, and ripping a blade bait. Only one definite bite on the hair jig, and a subtle nimble on a drop shot. It surprised me what actually worked for us. Here are the two baits and rigs that caught us bass on this trip.

Shaky Head

The shaky head caught a bass for me. Just one, but it still got me stoked. I used a 7 inch zoom sungill  straight tail trick worm, and placed it on a 3/16 oz green owner shaky head. The key was to subtly crawl it through the grass on the bottom. Keeping things nice and slow brought the bite on the shaky head. The reason it worked so well is because it stayed relatively clean from the grass, and it stayed right on the bottom where those bass were hanging. Throw the shaky head with a 7 foot spinning rod, and spinning reel with 15 pound braided line with a 15 foot 6 pound fluorocarbon leader. This will help you detect bites and cast the light worm further.

Carolina Rig

The classic Carolina Rig caught the majority of the fish hands down. The bait of choice for Carolina rigging was the Yamamoto D- Shad in the olive shad color. We Texas rigged the D-shad up on a Gamkatsu 4/0 offset worm hook. The key to keep the bait from picking up grass along the bottom was to make sure you completely covered the eye of the hook with the nose of the soft plastic d-shad. This made all the difference in the world for getting bites. The other key components to our Carolina rig with the Yamamoto D-shad was using 3 feet of 12 pound lo-vis green mono-filament line, a 1/2 oz tungsten weight, and a glass bead in front of the swivel of your leader to get a little noise going to attract the fish. “The devil is in the details,” as my college professor would always say. I believe these little tricks can really make a difference in your ability to get bites, and land fish.

January Fishing Trip Report Details

We got out on the water and used the knowledge from our last trip in December and headed straight to where we’d caught bass before. We were confident the hair jigs would produce, since we’d caught one before on them. The other key thing we learned is in the winter 30 feet is where you want to be to find fish that were willing to much. We stayed in that depth zone, and we definitely had more bites.

Surprisingly, we had only one small nimble on a hair jig. It was hard to put it down, since we had success on it in the past. My dad used a drop shot almost the whole time, and had one subtle bite as well. We decided maybe it was location, so we pulled up and moved to another area across the lake.

We started fishing the same way, but we weren’t having any luck. It was time to switch things up. I threw out the Carolina Rig and was surprised. On my second cast a bass sucked down the bait. My heart thumped as I set the hook! After only a couple cranks of the reel handle, the bass came unbuttoned. My bait looked like it had been sucked through a jet engine. The D-shad was destroyed. I tried to re-rig it up, but every time I drug it along the bottom it would grab big gobs of grass.

My thought process was obviously they are hanging right on the bottom, so I pulled out a shaky head to get right on them. Plus, the shaky head does a good job of staying clean from the vegetation. It slips right through the stuff. In only a couple casts a bass grabbed the shaky head trick worm, and the battle was on. I was extremely stoked to land him. I fished the shaky head for awhile longer, but didn’t have another bite.

Then it was game on with the Carolina Rig. I put a fresh olive D-shad on the line, and on the second cast with it popped one. I was amazed at how well the D-shad mimicked the same colors of the bass we were catching. I’m confident it was the perfect color to imitate a baby bass dying, and flitting along the bottom. With only about 30 minutes to go the Carolina rigged hooked up on one more bass. Plus, my dad hooked up on a soft plastic craw, but his came unbuttoned.

We ended the trip with a tally of 6 legitimate bites, and boated only 3 of them. Definitely need to improve my bites to landing ratio’s next time out on the water. For a few hours of fishing I felt like it was a decent trip.

To further help you out on Sand Hollow bass fishing check out the professionally designed Sand Hollow Bass Fishing Guide eBook. It will help you identify where you can locate the bass on Sand Hollow during each season, and it provides several baits, and techniques to use at those times for getting bass to bite. There are two option to purchase one book with some video tutorials, or the book by itself. Click on the image below to learn more about what’s inside to help you catch fish on this lake.