Critique my methods

[68camaro]

Went fishing for 4 hours today, no hits, no fish, no nothing. Can you review the conditions and what I did and give suggestions for better success?

CONDITIONS:

• Rained for 24 hours previous day, stopped raining during night.
• Cold front coming in tonight
• Fished noon to 4 pm
• 54*, partly cloudy
• Fairly Windy
• pond water very muddy, looks like milk chocolate
• Pond is narrow and fairly shallow
• No real structure but a lot of cover

TECHNIQUES

• Finesse on spinning reel - watermelon senkos on wacky and t-rig
• Swimming and structure jig with trailer
• Tried top water but with wind and water rough and it was chilly and I didn't stick with long
• Tried 6' suspending jerk bait last 15-20 minutes in deepest part

Any ideas of what I could have done better?

Thanks

[A-Jay]

49 minutes ago, 68camaro said:

Went fishing for 4 hours today, no hits, no fish, no nothing. Can you review the conditions and what I did and give suggestions for better success?

CONDITIONS:

• Rained for 24 hours previous day, stopped raining during night.
• Cold front coming in tonight
• Fished noon to 4 pm
• 54*, partly cloudy
• Fairly Windy
• pond water very muddy, looks like milk chocolate
• Pond is narrow and fairly shallow
• No real structure but a lot of cover

TECHNIQUES

• Finesse on spinning reel - watermelon senkos on wacky and t-rig
• Swimming and structure jig with trailer
• Tried top water but with wind and water rough and it was chilly and I didn't stick with long
• Tried 6' suspending jerk bait last 15-20 minutes in deepest part

Any ideas of what I could have done better?

Thanks

Though the water temp is not mentioned - given what else is provided, I'd expect some bass to be sucked up tight to whatever cover there was.

I'd have fished a Black/blue jig & craw all day in the thickest stuff I could find.

A-Jay

[blckshirt98]

"Rained for 24 hours previous day, stopped raining during night."  I've gotten skunked so many times the first clear day after a downpour I stopped going fishing those days altogether.  Waiting to hear some responses to this thread, maybe get my confidence up to give it another go!

[gulfcaptain]

Well first thing I see is muddy water?  Like A-Jay said (beat me to it) no water temp mentioned?  If the outside air was 54 I'm guessing it was a cold rain....cold muddy water not much fun.  Jig with a rattle in black and blue or any other color that is black and blue fished tight to cover.  Cast, sip coffee, shake, sip coffee, wait, shake again, sip coffee. Wait. Move slightly and repeat.  I'd stay out of any shade areas, fish sunny spots in the afternoon (let things warm up) and enjoy the outdoors.

[68camaro]

20 minutes ago, A-Jay said:

Though the water temp is not mentioned - give what else is provided, I'd expect some bass to be sucked up tight to whatever cover there was.

I'd have fished a Black/blue jig & craw all day in the thickest stuff I could find.

A-Jay

Thanks Ajay, I was starting with a watermelon colored jig and trailer with watermelon and blue skirt, then switched to a black dark blue trailer with same color skirt. Pond had a lot of snot around edges, so I was trying to cast parellel  to yuck and banks.

I thought since cold they would be deeper. I guess I need to start getting water temps.

 

[Senko lover]

With all the chocolate rain we had a little while back, I used a black & blue jig as well as a spinnerbait and had a decent catch rate.

[Scott F]

After a rain, fishing a pond, the ONLY location I'd fish, if such a place exists on your pond, is the spot where water from the recent rains flows into the pond. 

[scaleface]

I would go with a black and chartreuse jig and trailer .

[68camaro]

I should be able to sneak way tomorrow for a couple hours so I'll try a dark jig and trailer plus a spinner.

BTW, I lost a Whopper Plopper 90 on 3rd or 4th cast to add insult to bad day:(

[MFBAB]

CONDITIONS:

• Rained for 24 hours previous day, stopped raining during night.
• Cold front coming in tonight
• Fished noon to 4 pm
• 54*, partly cloudy
• Fairly Windy
• pond water very muddy, looks like milk chocolate
• Pond is narrow and fairly shallow
• No real structure but a lot of cover

- With the Muddy water and assuming this is COLD muddy water, along with the fresh rain, I would definitely expect them to be up against something HARD, like a concrete wall, timber, the first shallowest break on the shoreline, etc...And probably down on the bottom.  They just get really object-dependant in these conditions. 

A good Cold & Muddy Water analogy - I think this is from Guido Hibdon:

"Think of it like you are in an empty room at night with the lights off - 9 out of 10 people are going to head for the corner or at least to a wall...This is what fish do when the water gets really muddy as well, they will put their nose right against something solid"

TECHNIQUES

• Finesse on spinning reel - watermelon senkos on wacky and t-rig - Too hard for the fish to locate in these conditions. This isn't finesse time, you need to be thinking about helping the fish find your bait in these conditions, appendages, thick ribbed baits that displace water but that don't need to be worked quickly to do it. 
• Swimming and structure jig with trailer - Again, probably not moving enough water.  Think Colorado Spinnerbait Slow Rolled with a craw trailer or Rattle Jig w a water-displacing appendaged trailer soaked at the base of tree trunks
• Tried top water but with wind and water rough and it was chilly and I didn't stick with long - Not a good muddy water option
• Tried 6' suspending jerk bait last 15-20 minutes in deepest par - Not a good muddy water option

I agree with the guys saying Jig, but for sure mine would have a rattle and some scent on it, and a big-honking trailer with some appendages!!  Probably a little chartreuse dip on the trailer as well.  Soak it next to those HARD objects or shallow breaks, and I mean you can't get too close to the object, often they will be sulking right at the base of the tree or whatever it is in shallow water in these conditions. 

After all of that, cold and muddy is tough fishing though.  If you've got another pond that is normally super-clear, a lot of times going in right after a rain makes those type of ponds pretty "get-able" because it stains the water but not chocolate milk dirty, and puts the fish on the bank and shallow, where they never are in that sort of pond.  Just a thought  

Don't be discouraged though, in tough conditions like this all you can really do is try to play the odds as best you can.  Nobody is going out in those type of conditions in January expecting to knock their lights out, at least in areas with actual winter temps anyway

[BassinLou]

I think you just had a bad day. Just because you got skunked doesn't mean you did anything wrong. Sometimes fish are not willing to cooperate no matter what you throw out them. What you have to do, is get out there again and keep fishing.  

[Airman4754]

Something I do when the lake is blown out and cold (which in Oregon is often year round) is to peg a 1.5oz tungsten flipping weight with a black skirt and a 10 or 12" power worm. I fish it a lot like flossing a jig; drag, drag, hop. It's dark so the fish can see it best, it has a big profile so it is displacing water really well, and that big weight is making a ton of noise down there. 

Then as someone else mentioned a black & blue Colorado spinnerbait with a gold blade and a double tail black grub trailer is good. 

A 3/4oz black & blue California swim jig with a 5" black Big Hammer swimbait as the trailer is good too. Hit it off of everything you can. Fish this one wreckless and aggressive. If you're in weeds plow it through the weeds. If you're in timber hit it off of it, bounce rocks, etc. 

Lastly a Carolina rig with a 1oz steel egg weight and a glass bead. I usually use a junebug Rage lizard on it. When you retrieve have a little snap on your rod at the start of your drag to really send that weight into the bead. That specific lizard is displacing a ton of water. It has two sets of Rage craw legs and a Rage worm tail. 

When it's chocolate milk and cold fishing is pretty much going to suck, but if you're doing your best to help the fish locate your bait then the rest is normal stuff that you control: boat/bank position, location, depth, etc.