By Capt. Gus Gustafson
By early January, most baitfish will have left the creeks and found their way to the river channel were water temperatures are a bit warmer. Shadowing the shad and herring will be schools of bass, hybrids and perch. What makes deep-water fishing so good, is that baitfish and predators bunch up in tight knit schools, often near S-turns in the river channel or where two or more channels meet to form a delta.
Three easy ways to locate feeding fish are:
Find diving seabirds eating baitfish pushed to the surface by hungry predators.
Look for boats clustered in close proximity. Approach at slow speed to scatter the fish.
Look for images of bait and fish on your sonar screen.
Once located, a variety of methods can be employed. Two of the most popular are (1) suspended live bait or (2) jigging spoons just above the fish feeding below the boat. Best live baits are bass minnows, shad and herring. Bucktail jigs and metal jigging spoons are preferred by those deep dropping artificial lures. When bass and hybrids are surface feeding, a variety of top water lures, including jerk baits, shallow running crankbaits and Alabama rigs will do the trick. On days when fish are hard to locate, trolling is a viable option. Another choice is to fish the hot water discharge channels at the McGuire and Marshall power stations.
On occasion, bass and hybrids will be boiling the surface, particularly at dawn and on cloudy days. But when they aren’t, lures fished closer to the bottom will reap rewards.
Those wishing to catch crappie should concentrate their efforts around bridge pilings, boathouses and submerged brush. Best baits are crappie minnows and 1/64th to 1/16th ounce jigs fished to forty feet.