Lake Travis Fishing Report - January 20182,487 Readers Dave Kemper set his personal best record with this chunky 6lb 4 oz Lake Travis largemouth Water Temp: 58 degrees Recent cold fronts have cooled surface temperatures down to 58 degrees and have pushed bass into their full winter pattern. When cold fronts push water temperatures down below 60 degrees on Lake Travis, I always start deep. I am not saying you can’t find a few fish running banks but this is where I believe most of the bass population and biggest bass in the lake are living right now. I’ve been finding bass grouped up on ledges anywhere from 25-50 ft. of water. There are plenty of bass scattered and a lot of these fish can be hard to find and catch. As such, I focus on finding groups of bass schooling in and around bait balls in deep water. Jigging spoons, flutter spoons, underspins, drop shots, and jigs are my primary go-to baits for these fish. One of these baits will always perform better than the others, so be sure to rotate through all of them until you figure out what they want. Good electronics are extremely important to finding these deep water schools of bass. When I’m graphing, I don’t stop and fish unless I see fish on my Lowrance HDS unit, even if it is a ledge that I have had past success on. If I plan on drop shotting or spooning, I will position my boat directly over the bass that I marked and present my bait directly to the fish. If the bass are on the bottom, I will drop the bait all the way to the bottom. If they are suspended, I will drop my bait directly down to the depth that they are holding and “put it in their face” until they bite. Streaking lines are a good sign on your sonar. This means fish are shooting up from a “resting depth” in order to chase something they want to eat. If I want to cast to the fish, I will mark them and position my boat within casting distance and downwind of where I marked them and cast to them. Always make a note of the depth that you saw the fish and let your bait sink down into the desired depth zone. Every once in a while you will stumble across something that gives you a clue. Here is an example. On a recent trip, I dropped my drop-shot down to a group of bass that I saw holding in 38 ft. of water. After about a minute of working my bait, I got hung up. As I repositioned my boat to see if I could jar the bait loose, I began shaking my drop-shot vigorously to try to free the snag. After about 15 seconds of violently shaking my drop shot a largemouth slammed my bait and broke my sinker free of the snag and I ended up landing keeper number 5 on the day, a chunky 3 lb. largemouth. After that, my client and I were able to catch several other largemouth by aggressively working our drop shots over bottom hugging bass. The moral of that story is to pay attention to what you are doing every time you get a bite and build on that knowledge to unlock the puzzle for that day. If you’re willing to put in the work, deep water Bassin’ can be some of the greatest fishing of your lifetime. If you’re not willing to put in the work, give me call and we’ll get you on the schedule. Guided Fishing Trips For updates or to book a trip, give me a call at 915-217-5263 or email me at raytomasits@yahoo.com Tight Lines! Ray Tomasits - Hill Country Bass Coach Hill Country Bass Coach (@lake_travis_guide) Instagram photos and videos!
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