Hello, Anglers. There’s no shortage of water on Big Sam as levels were at 165.35 on January 8 plus we had heavy rains since then. I am finding almost zero submerged aquatic vegetation no matter where I look but there is plenty flooded hay grass close to the shoreline and on shallow ridges. We had a couple of decent days this week with both shallow and deep patterns working. Due to changing conditions, at times deep patterns worked best while other times shallow bass turned on. It will be interesting to see how the next cold front will impact patterns.

The water temperatures were 56-57 mid week but have fallen since the front hit Saturday. They will be in low 50s by the next few days possibly in 49-50 range. We had a couple days last week where the shallow bite with crankbaits worked well with fish being aggressive. There were also times when the soft plastic with either light weight or weightless soft plastics were what the bass wanted with this pattern working from 2 to 8 feet. We also fished Stanley Vibrashaft 3/8 oz. spinnerbaits over shoreline hay grass using a variety of retrieves from very fast to slow-roll.

Other patterns catching bass for us included drop shot and Texas rigs. We fished our drop shot from 18 to 30’ and Texas rigs from 10 to 25 feet. My drop shot rig consisted of 8 lb. test Berkley Fluorocarbon with a green pumpkin Havoc Bottom Hopper and #1 wide-gap Daiichi high carbon hook. I use a Revo SX20 spinning reel and Fenwick Elite 7’2” medium action moderate tip spinning rod. This is an awesome rig. I could fish it all day. The SX20 has a slightly larger spool than the SX10 which helps to minimize line twist. The SX20 also has an awesome drag system which is needed to play a big fish on light line.

We also worked a ½ oz. Stanley Bug Eye football jig with Berkley Chigger Craw trailer on points and ridges using 17 lb test Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line which gives minimal stretch and also lots of sensitivity as we fish this jig pretty deep and make long casts in depths of 15 to 25 feet