Author: Jeff Little
Would you throw a topwater popper in the first week of February? Maybe if you’re at a warm water discharge, or on a vacation to Florida. But what about in the frigid waters of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna river? Well I won’t tell a fish tale about that bait working magic in water with skim ice on the shoreline. But another warm water bait rigged and fished a little bit differently did open my eyes to a new pattern last winter.
Call it a fluke, that I tried, well, a Fluke, or soft plastic jerkbait last February. The few that I had in the bottom of my tackle bag must have fallen to the bottom and got lost the previous September. Five months prior, the river smallmouth were slamming them as I fast twitched them out of the downstream end of grass beds.
But that cold February day yielded almost no action until I took that baitfish profile and rigged it on a 1/8th ounce Confidence Baits Draggin Head. I had tried hair jigs, finesse tubes and a soft plastic craw rigged on the same swim bait style jig head. On a trip two weeks prior, I did well with a dead drifted hard jerkbait. But that didn’t bring them up in 36 degree water.
In utter frustration after several fishless hours, I dug around in my bag. My fingers came to pinch a soft bait down deep where I could not see. With the unearthed soft plastic jerkbait in one hand, and the Draggin Head tied to my line in the other, I shrugged, pinched the nose of the bait and screwed the bait holder into the minnow profile.
The bait didn’t settle on the bottom long when I felt the line just slowly build pressure. I looked laterally at the shoreline for reference. No, I wasn’t drifting that fast, my line was moving because of a fish. I buried the hook deep on the hookset and winched the 18.75 inch smallmouth to my net. Two casts later, another chunky smallmouth whacked the bait.
I was onto something. The only problem was the one every angler fears most. It’s what causes us to spend our children’s inheritance and aggravate our spouses when packages from Bass Pro Shops show up on the doorstep. It’s the problem that makes us carry enough tackle to give a man a double hernia. I found the ONE THING that they were biting, and I only had three of them with me.
Luckily, I didn’t have the dilemma of deciding “to share or not to share” said bait with a buddy - I was alone this trip. So I re-rigged the soft plastic when smallmouth after smallmouth shredded the bait with bulldogging surges to the bottom, and even a few jumps. I bit the tattered nose off and put it back on the screw lock until it would no longer hold it.
The three baits held up for several hours, and when I went home I had some soft plastic injecting to do to make more. But more importantly, I had figured out how to make a warm water bait work in the middle of winter using an unconventional rigging and presentation.
Jeff Little owns Confidence Baits, manufacturer of the Draggin’ Head. He has produced four instructional DVDs on kayak fishing, available at ConfidenceBait.net. Recently, he has started a new media project: The Tight Line Junkies Journal. To watch a video of Jeff catching the fish you just read about, or to watch the specifics of this presentation, click the preview button below:
Would you throw a topwater popper in the first week of February? Maybe if you’re at a warm water discharge, or on a vacation to Florida. But what about in the frigid waters of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna river? Well I won’t tell a fish tale about that bait working magic in water with skim ice on the shoreline. But another warm water bait rigged and fished a little bit differently did open my eyes to a new pattern last winter.
Call it a fluke, that I tried, well, a Fluke, or soft plastic jerkbait last February. The few that I had in the bottom of my tackle bag must have fallen to the bottom and got lost the previous September. Five months prior, the river smallmouth were slamming them as I fast twitched them out of the downstream end of grass beds.
But that cold February day yielded almost no action until I took that baitfish profile and rigged it on a 1/8th ounce Confidence Baits Draggin Head. I had tried hair jigs, finesse tubes and a soft plastic craw rigged on the same swim bait style jig head. On a trip two weeks prior, I did well with a dead drifted hard jerkbait. But that didn’t bring them up in 36 degree water.
In utter frustration after several fishless hours, I dug around in my bag. My fingers came to pinch a soft bait down deep where I could not see. With the unearthed soft plastic jerkbait in one hand, and the Draggin Head tied to my line in the other, I shrugged, pinched the nose of the bait and screwed the bait holder into the minnow profile.
The bait didn’t settle on the bottom long when I felt the line just slowly build pressure. I looked laterally at the shoreline for reference. No, I wasn’t drifting that fast, my line was moving because of a fish. I buried the hook deep on the hookset and winched the 18.75 inch smallmouth to my net. Two casts later, another chunky smallmouth whacked the bait.
I was onto something. The only problem was the one every angler fears most. It’s what causes us to spend our children’s inheritance and aggravate our spouses when packages from Bass Pro Shops show up on the doorstep. It’s the problem that makes us carry enough tackle to give a man a double hernia. I found the ONE THING that they were biting, and I only had three of them with me.
Luckily, I didn’t have the dilemma of deciding “to share or not to share” said bait with a buddy - I was alone this trip. So I re-rigged the soft plastic when smallmouth after smallmouth shredded the bait with bulldogging surges to the bottom, and even a few jumps. I bit the tattered nose off and put it back on the screw lock until it would no longer hold it.
The three baits held up for several hours, and when I went home I had some soft plastic injecting to do to make more. But more importantly, I had figured out how to make a warm water bait work in the middle of winter using an unconventional rigging and presentation.
Jeff Little owns Confidence Baits, manufacturer of the Draggin’ Head. He has produced four instructional DVDs on kayak fishing, available at ConfidenceBait.net. Recently, he has started a new media project: The Tight Line Junkies Journal. To watch a video of Jeff catching the fish you just read about, or to watch the specifics of this presentation, click the preview button below:
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