12-10-2012, 04:01 PM
It can be tough fishing from shore here, but persistence will pay off.
Live shad will be hard to come by in January, but frozen sardines and anchovies will be the ticket. If you chum up an area, and continue chumming while you fish, you should be able to pull some in. The typical style is to chum with anchovies and use the more oily sardines as bait (10-15lb line is typical). You could connect with stripers or decent sized channel cats this way. And by chum, we mean bring 5 or more pounds of just chum, plus your bags of bait. You really want to keep the area well "lubricated".
If you don't know where the fish are, it will be hit or miss from shore fishing shad-imitating lures, but another option in these areas is to fish a bigger setup (15-20lb line) with a trout-imitating swimbait in the 6" to 9" range. They stopped stocking trout in our lake a little over a year ago, but luckily, nobody told the stripers. They will still hit a trout artificial, and these fish can easily go 10 pounds or more. Winter is typically the time when striper guys bag the biggest fish of the year with this technique.
LMB are going to be a little deeper in January if the weather gets cooler. If we still are having 60 degree days, you may find some fish shallow still, but typically they will be holding on ledges in 25-50 feet of water. A drop shot rig with a little 4.5" straight-tail roboworm will do the trick here. Aarons magic, morning dawn, hologram shad, they are all good colors.
I expect the weather to be somewhere around 50's for the high, 35-40's at night.
Good luck buddy, let us know how it goes!
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Live shad will be hard to come by in January, but frozen sardines and anchovies will be the ticket. If you chum up an area, and continue chumming while you fish, you should be able to pull some in. The typical style is to chum with anchovies and use the more oily sardines as bait (10-15lb line is typical). You could connect with stripers or decent sized channel cats this way. And by chum, we mean bring 5 or more pounds of just chum, plus your bags of bait. You really want to keep the area well "lubricated".
If you don't know where the fish are, it will be hit or miss from shore fishing shad-imitating lures, but another option in these areas is to fish a bigger setup (15-20lb line) with a trout-imitating swimbait in the 6" to 9" range. They stopped stocking trout in our lake a little over a year ago, but luckily, nobody told the stripers. They will still hit a trout artificial, and these fish can easily go 10 pounds or more. Winter is typically the time when striper guys bag the biggest fish of the year with this technique.
LMB are going to be a little deeper in January if the weather gets cooler. If we still are having 60 degree days, you may find some fish shallow still, but typically they will be holding on ledges in 25-50 feet of water. A drop shot rig with a little 4.5" straight-tail roboworm will do the trick here. Aarons magic, morning dawn, hologram shad, they are all good colors.
I expect the weather to be somewhere around 50's for the high, 35-40's at night.
Good luck buddy, let us know how it goes!
[signature]