Bass Fishing Forum - Westernbass.com

I made another trip out Friday to try for some December bass. That may not seem difficult to do if you live in California, but in my area of Washington, it is a rarity. Some years the lakes are frozen and people are already standing on the ice fishing in December, but not this year. They are still biting in open water even though it was just 36-degrees when I launched. The air was much colder and caused for tons of backlashes due to frozen guides and reels.

I went out with my wife Tanya and as usual, she struck first with the first bass in the boat. She was fishing a jerkbait with a very long pause. After she caught her first one I asked how long she was pausing it. "It was a long time, I was spacing off thinking of our vacation," she said. That was the trick, I guess, and I started using much longer pauses.



It worked and I was able to catch a few.



We were keying on a few banks and hitting them over and over as you can see from the sonar logs I was recording. The key was finding any remaining grass that wasn't completely dead. If you were bringing in the crispy grass once in a while, you would get bit.



At this rate, we may still be catching bass in January! The only month remaining for me to say I have caught a bass in every month in Washington.

Soooo....what's your vacation spot?

mark poulson wrote:Soooo....what's your vacation spot?

Vegas. Need some sun.

ttb31183 wrote:

mark poulson wrote:Soooo....what's your vacation spot?

Vegas. Need some sun.

Sounds great right about now, although they're have cold weather, too.

Nice! We're in a similar situation out here in Colorado. Enjoying the open water fishing while we can assuming the winter hammer is going to drop any day now.

What jerkbaits were you guys using? I have my go-to jerkbaits, but always looking for some new baits to add to the line up.

EricAllee wrote:Nice! We're in a similar situation out here in Colorado. Enjoying the open water fishing while we can assuming the winter hammer is going to drop any day now.

What jerkbaits were you guys using? I have my go-to jerkbaits, but always looking for some new baits to add to the line up.

Yes, same situation here. Ice on some of the lakes but we are pushing it as long as we can.

We've been using a variety of jerkbaits. I've caught a bunch on the Ima Flit 120 and Megabass Vision 110. This pic was a deeper one, a Strike King KVD deep jerkbait. My buddy has been catching them on the Spro mcstick 110. So all kinds are working.

Where would we all be if women didn't like jerk...baits?

ttb31183 wrote:

EricAllee wrote:Nice! We're in a similar situation out here in Colorado. Enjoying the open water fishing while we can assuming the winter hammer is going to drop any day now.

What jerkbaits were you guys using? I have my go-to jerkbaits, but always looking for some new baits to add to the line up.

Yes, same situation here. Ice on some of the lakes but we are pushing it as long as we can.

We've been using a variety of jerkbaits. I've caught a bunch on the Ima Flit 120 and Megabass Vision 110. This pic was a deeper one, a Strike King KVD deep jerkbait. My buddy has been catching them on the Spro mcstick 110. So all kinds are working.

Awesome I'll have to give the KVD Jerkbaits a shot! I've got a handful of Vision 110's but they're just so pricey for a jerkbait I quit buying them unless they're on sale.

yeah, two weeks ago I couldn't get them to eat the frog anymore down here, so went jerkbait. Not too good at it, but got a new PB in numbers after 2/3rds of a day, 57. But got it down pretty good, and landed 70 last week, upping the PB by quite a bit. Will see how I do tomorrow. Oh, I used the X-rap. Pauses seemed to work better at times for me too, about two seconds. Guess if it's really cold you'd go 10 or so huh? Water is about 60 down here now, getting darn chilly.

Otay Michael wrote:

yeah, two weeks ago I couldn't get them to eat the frog anymore down here, so went jerkbait. Not too good at it, but got a new PB in numbers after 2/3rds of a day, 57. But got it down pretty good, and landed 70 last week, upping the PB by quite a bit. Will see how I do tomorrow. Oh, I used the X-rap. Pauses seemed to work better at times for me too, about two seconds. Guess if it's really cold you'd go 10 or so huh? Water is about 60 down here now, getting darn chilly.

Yep 10 seconds is a good number. It's hard to do though. I have a hard time waiting that long and usually will do a rip, rip, rip retrieve then a 1-2-3-4-5 count in my head before starting again.