Episode 373: Lake Borumba Winter Bass With Stuart Kenny

Stuart’s Borumba Bass Fishing Tips

• During the winter months, banks that are exposed to the wind and at the same time get plenty of sun are the best places to start looking for Borumba bass. If you can throw in some a bit of rock or a weed bed you have the perfect place to start targeting bass.
• Bass get cold, just like humans. In winter they look for pockets of warmer water, which brings them up into the shallows to feed.
• A good strategy is to work slowly along a bank on the electric, starting at a depth of around 40ft and casting towards the bank. If you don’t get success, move closer to the bank and repeat. Usually fish sitting in 40ft off banks or points are waiting to move into shallower water to feed, but usually there will be other fish already in the shallows.
• If you’re finding a lot of small fish schooled in the basin or deep in the original creek beds during winter it can often be that the larger fish are up in shallower water gorging themselves in a pre-spawn feed (bass can’t spawn in dams but it doesn’t stop them preparing). It’s time to leave the schools of small fish behind and go shallower in search of bigger fish.

Stuart’s Borumba Bass Tackle

• Stuart uses a 6’10” 2-6lb ACM Customs rod for soft plastics in winter. This is a fairly soft rod that allows a bass to short strike without the lure getting ripped out of their face. He couples withs with a 1000 size reel, 6lb braid and 8lb fluorocarbon leader. This is an open water, soft plastic combo.
• For jerkbaits in reasonably open water, weed beds and sparsely timbered areas, a 7’, 4-8lb ACM Customs rod on a dropshot blank bends in the tip and has enough give that the lure can be sucked in by an implosion strike, but has enough strength in the but to put pressure on large fish. 2500 size reel, 8lb braid and 10-12lb leader.
• For jerkbaiting in more heavily timbered areas, a 4-10lb baitcast outfit helps with accurate casting and with working the lures slower through structure. A 150 size baitcast reel, 10lb braid and 10-16 lb leader.

Stuart’s Best Bass Lures For Borumba

• A 3” Fish Arrow Flash J Shad is super lifelike and has a subtle action that seems to work well on winter bass. Fished on a 1/8 oz and 1/4oz jig head, which is lighter than a lot of anglers use in SEQ. Stuart likes a size 1 or 2 hook, which is also smaller than most anglers use but tends to result in greater hookup rates. Suitable for fishing anywhere from 40ft depths top just 3 ft. If the fish are out wide and deep he’ll rig the lure on a Damiki underspin, cast the lure long and let it sink to the required depth, then slow roll back through the school. If there are no bites he’ll try a yo-yo retrieve through the school. When fish are in shallow water it’s just a matter of slow rolling the lure back through the school.
• The Pontoon 21 Greedy Guts 66mm is a medium depth running suspending jerkbait with an internal cast weight, allowing it to be accurately cast even in a breeze. Long casting is an advantage when the fish aren’t super aggressive and you want to get the lure a long way from the boat. There are lots of different ways to fish this lure, but one of Stuarts favourites is to twitch the lure so it just kicks side to side once, and then pause for 2-10 seconds. This creates a short, erratic action and a suspending pause that keeps the lure in the zone. It can also be slow rolled with a pause if you need to mix it up. Great around timber, especially the large laydowns that go from the bank into the water and have weed beds around them.
• A Beetlespin or Flash J Spin can be added to the Fish Arrow soft plastic if the fishing is quiet and you need to add more flash and vibration to the lure.