Saturday - pretty Jan day - slow fishing for me... why?

First, thanks in advance. Have had a lot of great help on here. Learning a lot.

I spent most of the day on the lake yesterday. Was a pretty Jan. day, can't complain about the weather. Wind shifted direction about 4 times through the day, but not too bad.

Got some shad quickly, few big 10" and some smaller and a couple of bluegill. Had some jello chicken also. Started fishing deeper channels - 25 to 30' and caught a few dinks and a couple of nice eaters. Moved to some mid-lake humps. Marking lot of bait and sandbass. Thinking there should be some with them, but was slow. Moved a couple of times. Different depths. Lot of bait. Drift speed .3 up to .7, mostly slower. Caught couple more eaters, few more dinks through the day.

Ended up cleaning five fish 4-7 lbs. Caught about 10 total, but nothing big. No "big" hits. 8 of the 10 fish came from the chicken... Fished the shad, whole and cut.

Scanned several areas. Fished where it "looked" good on the graphs. But was slow and just didn't happen. Not sure what I am doing wrong... or what all I am doing wrong! LOL

Here are some pictures of the graphs. Sorry they are not as clear as I thought they would be. What do you see here?







Stay safe everyone!
Ken

Hmmm, Well, I'll start by saying your story lines up pretty good with mine. Caught fresh bait, including some good size gizzards. I started fishing deep too. 30ish feet on a big flat, not a channel. I had baits down at 6:40 am. Slow start. Caught 5 fish between 8:00 and 10:00. Three of them were 23, 25 and 30. The other 2 were smaller. I wouldn't say you were doing anything wrong. If my graph looked like that I would have drifted that too. I was running .3 to .5 most of the time. Just gotta keep puttin in the time. When you hit it just right, it will be epic! Good luck and tight lines...

I see some bait, and I see some fish... What I dont see is those fish busting up that bait.

I like to see those bait balls broken up and streaks going through them. That said, I catch fish a lot when I dont see that so... what do I know?

Is that an older Hummingbird unit? I am not familiar with that type of display.

OH and PS, thats still a decent day if you ask me! Not too bad at all. But I have low standards.

Thanks guys.
Dan, it is a Lowrance Elite Ti 9. I have the fish ID on. I need to fine tune it some, still learning what it can do. Cell phone in the sun just didnt give a good picture.

I had a good day. Just not catching any of the bigger fish. Will keep putting in time!

Tight lines!

Ken

I'm way down the list of folks to be giving advice. Sounds to me like you did about all you could do to find active fish. Best I can tell you have all the essentials covered, good variety of fresh bait, looked and fished in multiple areas. The only thing I could add would be trying a different presentation (anchor). I am usually far too lazy to drop anchors. I live in OK but fish in TX a good amount during the winter. Its funny, but our lakes fish quite a bit different here in Northern OK. We can almost always find active fish in shallow water, 2-15ft, and our water usually gets into the mid 30 degree temps each winter. When I get to TX, if the water is below 50, I usually head for no less than 35' water to start. Obviously everyone has their own preference, but keep an open mind, keep picking up on things other people are saying, and you will have days where different tactics produce the big bites. One thing you can never control.. the fish.. sometimes they just don't do their part. For the record, I usually get spanked by the Bluecat if the weather is comfortable. Most of my best big fish days have been completely miserable weather wise.....high winds, overcast or raining, more misery more fish for me, in TX anyway. I think your on the right path, just stay at them.

Every time this winter, I have been to the lake, I can find fish, and I can find bait. I just can't find fish actively pursuing bait. So, don't feel left out. What's really bad is, only about 2000 surface acres of it are even fishable, due to depth. I've looked in the half that is less than 14 foot deep, but I don't mark fish, or bait in any of those areas. It's a ghost town, All of the bait and fish hunker down in some very small areas of real estate in my main catfish lake.....at least if my fish finder is telling the true story. And I do see most all of the fish being caught, are coming from those areas. So, I guess you just have to be there at the right time. Apparently, I never am.