By Jim Gildea
January 17, 2012
December is my favorite month to fish. Not necessarily because the fishing is great, but because the tournament season for me is over and I’m able to slow down - it always reminds me of why I started fishing in the first place.
I started fishing because it was fun and relaxing. Then I joined a club and started fishing local tournaments, then I moved on to bigger tournaments. Over the course of the season, it’s easy to get wrapped up into chasing points, winning money, and doing as well as you can.
My best friend and I always get out and fish a few times in late December, usually right before the lakes in the Northeast freeze. There’s usually no one else on the lake, and the fishing is generally pretty good. Our only concern is enjoying the fishing, telling stories and talking about the upcoming season. In December it’s like we’re kids again, just catching fish, laughing about the same old stories and having a good time.
My friend and I got out two days before Christmas. Despite raining off and on with air temperatures in the high 30’s to low 40’s, we caught 60 fish. We fished some deep wintering spots for smallmouth, then went to a shallow cove and nailed some largemouth, pickerel, and big yellow perch.
Here’s how we did it.
Blade Bait
This is a go-to standard for me this time of the year. I’ve experimented with different ones and find that several of the newer models, in particular the Vibe and the Cicada, have much more vibration than the original Silver Buddy. You can feel the vibration very clearly, even when you are hardly working it - and that’s the key this time of year to trigger a reaction bite in cold water..
I tend to use either ⅜ or ½ ounce, depending on depth and wind. Generally, we fish between 20 and 30 feet so with light wind, the ⅜ is fine. If the wind kicks up, or we are working deeper than 30, than we go with the ½ ounce. If the fish aren’t in 20-30 feet, we’ll gradually work deeper, down to 40-50 feet at times.
Spinning tackle works best, although it’s not required. We used 15-pound braided line with a three foot leader of 8-pound Sugoio Fluoro. You can connect the braid to the fluoro with a small swivel as it prevents line twist. With braid you can really feel the vibration and you know when you have a fish on.
There’s definitely a trick to the blade bait, but once you figure it out, it works every year. Basically, you need to move it far enough off the bottom to make it vibrate, but not so much that you are pulling it away from the fish. The fish are holding tight to the bottom this time of year, so you need to keep the bait in their strike-zone.
To start, place the boat into the wind and make a long cast upwind, letting it fall on semi-slack line. When the bait hits bottom, lift it gently just fast enough to feel it vibrate. Usually, I lift the rod tip 24 inches or so. Let the bait fall back to the bottom, and repeat back to the boat. You really can’t fish it too slow. As long as you can feel ANY vibration you are going to get bit if you are around fish. The bait should never come more than a foot off the bottom, which is why you don’t want to move it fast when you lift the rod tip.
Drop Shot
Smallies especially hit the drop shot really well with the water in the low 40’s. I use a shorter leader this time of the year, usually around a foot. I want the bait on the bottom since the fish are not going to come up for it.
Like summer drop shot fishing, 6-pound Sugoi fluorocarbon works the best since it gives the worm more natural action. Also, you want to use a ⅜ drop shot weight so the bait won’t move on the bottom, since the fish aren’t going to chase too much this time of year. I like to use dark colors in December. A favorite of mine is the Yamamoto Kut Tail Worm in color 921 Brown Purple. The Kut Tail doesn’t have much action and looks like an easy meal. The darker color of the 921 works best because the forage is darker this time of year due to the lower light penetration in 20+ feet of water.
I fish it slow since the fish aren’t moving too fast and seem to want their plastics pretty slow. I find I don’t always mark fish on the sonar this time of year. They sit right on the bottom and while you might mark some of them, it’s not unusual to mark only a couple fish and then catch twenty! This time of year, they are stuck right on the bottom and don’t show up very well even on the best sonar.
Finding the Fish
The best part of winter smallmouth fishing is you only have to find the fish once. Once you find them, they will not only stay there all winter, they will be there year after year. We have literally been fishing the same exact spot for ten years, at the same time of the year, with the same results. The winter bite starts when the water gets to 50 degrees or lower and continues until ice up. In the Northeast, this is from mid-November until January.
On the other hand, finding them is trial and error. You have to fish for them; you can’t just drive around and look for bait balls. Sometimes you will see balls of bait, but many times you won’t.
We are fishing natural glacial lakes as well as river systems that have dams. In both cases, you want to find a gravel bottom in 20-30 feet that drops into the deepest water in the area. For a river, that’s almost always near the dam. For a lake, it can be anywhere, and sometimes it’s trial and error. The key is to find the gravel bottom, since they really prefer this type of area, as opposed to a muck bottom or larger rocks. The best spots in a natural lake are gravel humps that top out at 20 or 30 feet, or long tapering gravel points that drop into deep water.
One key thing is the fish are NOT here at any other time of the year. We have one gravel hump we fish in a major tournament lake that during the actual fishing season can give you a fish or two, but usually at best one or two small keepers. Once tournament season is over, you can go to that same hump and catch ten limits of fish with a weight that would win most tournaments.
Likewise, in the river systems, the fish spend most of the year in shallow current, and winter right by the dam in 20-30 feet. You won’t catch a fish there during the summer or early fall but by November, it’s lights out.
If you live near a Smallmouth lake, break out the blade bait, call your best friend and spend a day on the water.
