Winter Bass Fishing!

My personal goal has been to catch a bass every month of the year, and I was getting nervous in December because I hadn’t pulled it off yet. All nervousness has been laid to rest now. I got the job done. Here is the full story of how I quickly tallied a bass in December at Sand Hollow Reservoir.

I was able to slip out to Sand Hollow Reservoir for some winter bass fishing. After taking care of some things for work, I went out for about two hours late in the afternoon with my friend Randy Rhodes. He’d never been bass fishing before, so I thought I’d take him out and see if we could get one on the line. It was feeling like a long shot, but at least we had a shot to take. Two hours isn’t much time to figure out how to catch a bass, especially from the shore when it takes you longer to move from spot to spot.

We got there and set out on foot to a place I thought would be good from the bank. I knew the bass would be deep, and would probably be on the south facing, north shorelines where the sun hits the longest. Largemouth love the warmth of the rocks on those northern shorelines, especially when the water is cold.

When we arrived to our spot we rigged up two rods. I gave Randy a spinning rod set up with a Jackal crosstail shad on a drop shot. I tied on a 3/8 oz. Rippin Lips Summer Craw  Football Jig with a Jackal Sasuteki green pumpkin blue flake craw trailer on my baitcasting rod.

After about an hour and a half without a bite, we picked up and moved to another location along the damn where I’d caught fish before. We tried a few casts, hung up a bait, and lost it. Then we moved to one more spot further down the damn. I literally yelled up to Randy, “Well this is my last cast, and then we’ll go.” With that statement I hucked my jig out into the water. I let it sink to the bottom, and slowly crawled it back towards me along the rip rap of the damn. About half way in from my cast, at about 20 feet of water, I felt what I thought were rocks. Then the rocks started pulling back, so I set the hook, and there he was! My first December winter bass! I was stoked!

We didn’t have much time to stick around and see if we could catch some more. We made a couple more casts with my jig, and then hung up the jig in the rocks and lost it.We called it quits after we lost our jig and hiked back to our car in the parking lot with smiles on our faces. Winter fishing can be tough, but we had a few hours, made it happen, and “kracked” a bass!

Here is map of where we fished, and where I hooked up the fish caught:
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As Always,

Stay Stoked!