Get Ahead of the Prespawn Curve

All right, what's going on? This video is sponsored by Shop Carl's. You know, their holiday sale is winding down, but you can still go get $10 off your first order of $25 or more using the code Welcher10. You know, it's worth it to get a membership. You can get early access to new colors, new baits, new stuff on the site, early access to the sales and bundles and all that type of stuff. But right now we're gonna jump into our January kind of baits that we're gonna start using to catch some of these pre-spawn bass. And they start to move a little bit shallower, or right now they're actually really deep in January, but they're gonna start trying to push up on some of these transition type stuff. They're just gonna be on the deeper side of it for the most part. One main thing the fish seem to really like in January is really steep, sharp drops inside the water. And it doesn't have to be super deep. Sometimes it can be a drop that's just straight down, you know, from two feet to three feet, two feet to five feet, or it can be anywhere out deep from eight feet down to 20. Any kind of really steep drop, fish just really seem to like, you know, that early, early pre-spawn, late winter type of a stuff, which is what I have down here in January within the area of the country that I live in. It's really kind of pre-pre-spawn. They start getting in the places they're gonna sit before they move up to really pre-spawn, if that makes any sense. But I'm gonna show y'all kind of the baits that I run through. Come on, be in the video. Come on, come on, Hunter. Give us your January baits. Let us know what would you be throwing in January. Too cold? Too cold for Hunter in January. Well, if the wife won't go fishing, that means the fish are probably gonna be a little inactive because they know this, right? Well, this time of year is definitely gonna be a time of year to lean on the jig. There's one right there. It's a Dirty Craw Ace. And this time of year, as you can see down there below, we're going chunk all the way around. I don't second guess it. I don't change it up. I use a chunk. That's what I use. That's what I'm going to use in January. A lot of people like a big salty style bait. I like the chunk, the regular chunk. You know, a lot of brands make them. Doesn't really seem to matter. They all do about the same thing. But that's what I'm going to be throwing. I actually got one rigged up right here somewhere. Fished with it today, actually, and getting rigged up to go tomorrow. This is the exact one that I caught a few bass on today. Just a Ace with a chunk on it. Pretty simple for me. This is gonna be something to, this is actually a 3 1⁄8 ounce, a little bit lighter than what I normally throw. I normally throw in a half, but I knew in the lake that I was going to, it was gonna be fishing a lot of that four feet deep and shallower water. You know, docks and stuff, the backs of docks, shallow floating docks. Flip it up to wood, flip it up to some rock, all that type of stuff. But I knew the deepest I was gonna go would probably be four, maybe five or six feet deep at all. So 3 1⁄8 ounce. Pretty simple setup right here. This is my basic all around rod. This is gonna be a seven foot three, medium heavy. This one's actually a medium heavy. Extra fast. I really like that for a jig because it's really good to cast. It's really easy to place the bait under the dock or wherever you're trying to cast to, but that bait gets into, this rod gets into the backbone a little bit faster. With a jig, that's really important because you gotta compress that weed guard and then get that big hook through the fish's head, hopefully. So I like the extra fast, a little bit better for casting. But this is an Indy and it's a 8.3 to one gear ratio Concept C from 13 Fishing. So 20 pound Sunline shooter. That's kind of the jig setup that I use. That's like my all around. I deviate from there. If I'm gonna be throwing a big, giant 5 1⁄8 flipping jig, which I'll use some in the winter, I'm gonna be throwing that on a seven foot six heavy. I'm gonna be throwing on 22 pound shooter. So I just kind of scale it up from there. I've got some smaller jigs I throw and I throw it around floating docks on some really clear water lakes. And I'll throw a 3 1⁄8 or a half on those types of bodies of water on actually 18 or 16 pound line. But for the most part, the best all around this time of year is at 20 pound because the fish still wanna be close to some heavy cover, whether it be rocks, wood, docks, anything. They wanna be close to some heavy cover. So I'm gonna go a little bit on the safer than sorry line and do some 20 pound floor par. But anyways, now this is one that I don't throw a lot all year long. The good old spinnerbait. It is a staple in the boat from, I would say late November until early April. It's gonna be laying on the front deck all the time. Just kind of one of those baits that's really good at covering that vertical type of structure. So if you got a rock drop off, you got riprap, you got a lay down tree, anything that has a good bottom contact, it's really easy to get that spinnerbait and slow roll it down a piece of cover. And it's also where if you're on a warming trend or for some reason you're on a shallow piece of cover, you can speed it up. So it's a bait that you can fish from six, seven feet deep, or you can fish deeper than that obviously if you want to, but I just don't usually. It's a bait that you can cover water efficiently with from about six feet deep all the way up to six inches deep. Just depends on how slow you want to reel it. So it's a really, really good bait with a lot of draw power, especially if you can find somewhere where these shad are pushed up against one of these vertical drops. Doesn't have to be deep like I said, or it can be deep. It's a really good bait for fishing that stuff. You can just slow roll it down those breaks, those edges, you know, slow roll it down the sides of the dock, try to hit some dock posts with it. All that type of stuff is just a really good way to catch them whenever it gets really cold. So from there, this is going to be the bulk of what I do this time of year. Number one thing that I'm going to do is going to be doing some cranking. Got me two cranking rods right here. Usually have at least two lay on the front deck this time of year. You can see I've got a shallow runner, which is this one. Runs about four feet deep, something like that. Three to four feet deep. And I've got actually, this is a little standard old DT6. Runs, you know, on 10 pound test, I can get it down to seven or eight feet deep pretty easily. Just one of the main keys that I want to have with crankbaits this time of year is I want them to get to the max depth extremely quickly. I don't want a crankbait that I can get to six foot, but it takes me half my cast to get it to six feet. I want a crankbait that gets down to that depth very, very quickly. And that's the good thing about those two that I have. It doesn't have a lot of drag in the water. Both of those are kind of narrower wobbling baits, closer to flat side baits. Neither one of them are a true flat side, but they are more flat side-ish baits. And that helps them not have as much drag in the water, not have quite as much buoyancy. And those get down there to that depth a little bit faster. So, you know, a lot of times, casting angles are hard. You know, you don't always get to bomb cast it down the perfect piece of cover. So making the cast just past the cover and getting that bait down there is extremely important in the wintertime. But I always keep a couple. I keep one, like I said right there, that's four feet deep for fishing those 45 degree banks. You know, rip rap, shallow docks, around all that type of stuff. Anything that's just four feet deep or less. And then obviously, a little bit deeper one, fishing a little bit deeper stuff. Fishing the bluffs, fishing the corners of rip rap, round bridges, all that type of stuff. Cranking is gonna be probably how you weigh in most your bass this time of year. At least that's what I do. I weigh in a bunch of bass this time of year cranking. Now, another one that's really, really good. It excels on some lakes. Some lakes it doesn't do quite as good. But that's gonna be the old Jerkin' Twitch. I just got a, I don't know what color this is. But it just looks like a shad. I mean, that's just all you're trying to imitate is a dime shad. You know, that's kind of, the difference in what I'm doing with that is if I'm in really clear water, I feel like I'm gonna be able to bite that jerkbait a little bit better. They seem to want to suspend off the edges of the breaks. They seem to want to hunker down in the big crevices of the rocks and stuff. And a lot of times, winding that crankbait over them really quickly just seems to not get them to react in that really clear water. Or sometimes they'll bite it and they won't get it good. That jerkbait just kind of stays in their face for a little bit longer. And that clear water, it really draws them from a long way, draws them up out of the cover, up out of the brush, up out of the treetops, up out of the cracks in the rocks, and I'm able to beat that jerkbait. So that rod is actually a six foot eight medium fast action with 10 pound Sunlime Sniper on it, actually. I know here we talk about shooter a ton, but all those crankbaits and jerkbaits actually have Sniper on it right now. I've been cranking and jerking and all that stuff with Sniper this off season. Just casts so much better. It's been windy, it seems like it's been windy every day for two or three months, and that Sniper just seems to cast a little bit better into the wind. So I've been using that for a while. The crankbaits are both seven foot medium fake cranking rods. These are very, very inexpensive cranking rods. I mean, very inexpensive. And I have caught a bunch of bass on them, weighed in a bunch of bass on them. I'll get me even more of those fake rods this year because they're very inexpensive, but they're extremely good for cranking those lighter, small treble hook baits. So 10 pound line, six to one gear ratio reels on the crankbaits, and an eight point three to one gear ratio reel on the jerkbait. Because that jerkbait, I'm working it with the rod, and I'm just running up slack with the reel. So pretty much gonna use the fastest one that I can possibly use for that. So let's see what else we got. January baits, that about covers it. I do throw a vibrating jig some. I used to throw it a whole lot more. Now the spinnerbait has kind of taken over. I know for the past 10, 15 years, the vibrating jig has been kind of the king and kind of dethroned the spinnerbait, which used to be one of the best big fish baits around. And then over the past couple years, they've kind of both had their time and place. You know, the vibrating jig's good sometimes, spinnerbait's good sometimes. You just kind of gotta play it both and have them both out and use them both every single day and figure out what they're wanting that day and which one's best for the cover that you're fishing. But vibrating jig's another one that I throw. But other than that, pretty much gonna be some flat-sided crankbaits, some jerkbaits, and some jigs, and that's about what I'm gonna throw in January, no matter where I go at all these lakes around here. You know, if I go to a couple of lakes, I'll deviate it up a little bit, throw a couple single swimbaits sometimes, you know, some 2.8, some 3.3, some 3.8, all that type of stuff on just a regular ball head jig and throw it around to something that I can see in a live scope. But for the most part, these few right here is what I'm gonna use in January. So that's all I've got for January. I keep it simple. I try to stay in high-percented places. I try to stay in places where there's multiple, multiple fish, and I'm throwing in front of a bunch of them every single cast because they don't all bite this time of year. It's not like it's March and everyone you run up on is gonna at least swat at your bait. It's like, you better throw in the middle of 20 of them because 19 of them are not really gonna bite this time of year because they just don't have to. Their metabolism's low. They don't have to feed as much. They don't have to move as much. They're trying to conserve energy. So I try to stay in extremely high-percentage places. I try to fish the most obvious stuff on the lake. The stuff that you drive by and you say, that's too obvious, that's stupid, everybody fishes that. That's what I'm gonna fish this time of year, for sure. And I'm gonna throw all four of these baits on it. So appreciate y'all watching. About to rig up. Got me another little tournament in the morning that I'm going to, so we'll see y'all.