December Bass Fishing: The Top 5 Baits You NEED to Catch Cold-Weather Bass!

This video is about the top five baits to use during December. Starting with blade baits, spoons, and tail spinners. These are what I like to call heavy metal, right? Mainly because they're compact but they're heavy baits and you can get them down deep which is where the bass are this time of year and you can fish them effectively.

Typically, what they do is they vibrate on the fall, which is really the enticing part of these baits. Throw them out there and just let them fall to the bottom and then just jig them straight up and then let them fall back down. With your rod tip, just guide them back down. Don't do a full slack line because the hooks can get snagged up in the line. That usually happens a lot, especially with spoons. But just a lift and drop retrieve vertically typically is what it takes to get a bite. You're imitating a bait fish that's dying. This time of year water gets really cold and a lot of that bait fish, they're struggling to stay alive. And so you're imitating that. You can either do it vertically or you can cast out and then kind of yo-yo your way back, back into where you're at. Just slow yo-yo back in.

Now, one other way that a lot of people don't fish but very effective way is if you got good electronics on your boat. These days most boats do. You can go out and find a school of bait fish say a perch. A ball of perch, take a spoon, and get it down underneath that ball of perch. And a lot of times, the bass are up underneath it and they're feeding up on that. So, if you can get that spoon down there you typically get whacked, but even if you don't, just hold the spoon directly beneath that school of bait fish and just hold it.

Don't move it or anything. The movement of the boat, the movement of the wakes lapping away, you know, the water lapping up on the line will make that movement. You can't hold it perfectly still even your arm holding it. And that little subtle movement makes that big and you got it on the swivel. I'll make that spoon just kind of move in place and that's all it takes. Just hold it underneath that school of perch or or shad or whatever. Just keep it there and a lot of times great way to get bits. An often overlooked technique that works really well. So hard baits, those heavy metal baits work really well in December

So the next bait you want to throw is a crankbait. Now, of course, you can say crankbaits work year-round and they do but during the winter time, specifically during December, you can really narrow down the selection to two types of crankbaits. One is a lipless crankbait like a Womeku shad or a rattle trap, and the other are flat-sided crankbaits.

So the rattling type lipless crankbaits, those work, you want a half-ounce or a three-quarter-ounce right now, and you want to fish it much like the same way I just mentioned with the blade baits. Get it down there and it vibrates when it falls so get that vertical jigging action that just vibrates as it falls. Pick it back up and let it vibrate. Be ready for that strike as it falls. That's typically when it happens. So when you lift up, that's usually when you feel the weight of the fish, so be ready for that strike.

Also with other crankbaits, a lot of times, it's that wide wobble action that really works well, that gets the bite, that happens best during the warmer water months. Right now you want those flat-sided crankbaits like the Little John from Spro, those have that tight wiggle action. They have a narrow bill. They can get down, they're really deep too. They can get down 12-plus feet deep. And that tight wiggling action works much better in the cold water than those wide wobbling lures that you can do in the summertime. So flat-sided crankbaits.

Again, just pick the forage base in your lake. If it's shad, you know, you want that Tennessee shad color those chrome colors. If you're perch and bluegill or the forage of your lake, then use those colors because you want to match the hatch right now. And that is gonna get a lot of bites. You'd be surprised how well crankbait works even if the water temperature is say 45 degrees.

The next bait you need to be throwing are jigs. Now, there's a ton of different jigs out there, so don't go hold on hold on hold on going. Yeah, okay. Again, your bait selection is very simple during this time of year. It's actually one of the easiest times of the year as far as choosing baits. And with jigs, you want to stick to finesse jigs. Those small compact-size jigs. Like a quarter-ounce or smaller. With the short strands on it. This is what works really well right now. Mainly because bass are transitioning from chasing bait fish to now they want to go to slower moving forage like crawdads.

Newsflash, crawdads don't hibernate during this time of year That's a myth, but what they do do is they bury up in the mud to stay warm and they move very slow. They're very lethargic right now, and so it could give the impression that they're hibernating, but they're not. They bury up in the rocks because the rocks have especially warming trends during the wintertime when the sun beats down on the riprap and the crawdads will get up in there. Some people will think that they're hibernating, they are not. But they are moving very slowly. And the bass will seek them out, man. Those are little protein snacks for them.

So small chunk bite size, finesse size jig, jerk baits, jigs are really what you want to have, right? Those are key. So make sure you have those. And with the trailers on them, make sure they don't have a whole lot of action to them. Just real easy, you know, like, zoom chunks that kind of stuff that don't have a lot of movement on them, that's what you want, and just slowly ease that jig along the bottom, just crawl it.

You're not lifting it or do any kind of action to it really this time of year, just slowly crawl it along up and over any kind of obstacles like a meandering slow-moving crawdad. You're imitating that perfectly. If you think you're going really slow, you're not going slow enough, double down and go twice as slow. And that is usually when you start getting bit.

Now I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about jerk baits because jerk baits in cold water are like bread and butter, man. It's like peanut butter and jelly, they go hand-in-hand. Jerk baits work exceptionally well during the coldest months of the year.

Why?

Well, because you can get them to suspend. And it looks like a bait fish that's just trying to reserve its energy and trying to withstand the coldest months right now, the coldest water, so they're not going to move around much. A lot of those bait fish just try not to move at all, just trying to conserve its remaining energy reserves and a suspending jerk bait does exactly that. You can get it down to where the bass are at and just hang it in his face until they can't stand it anymore.

So baits like the McStick 85 will get you down about six to eight feet of water, or the McStick 110 plus one that'll get you down to 12 maybe 15 feet of water depending on your line diameter. One thing about using jerk baits is that to get them to suspend properly, the water temperature is going to affect the suspending properties of the jerk bait, and so sometimes when you put it out there, it might sink a little bit or actually might rise a little bit, you want it to stay in place. So the best way to do it is change the hooks out. If it's rising just a bit too much then replace the front hook first with the next size up.

Now, a lot of times that's it. That's all you need to do and they will suspend perfectly but if it still rises a bit then do the same thing on the back hook. And If you're still getting it to rise, which it shouldn't by now, but even if it is, then replace the middle hook. And that, typically by changing out those hooks, you're going to balance it out properly and of course, the converse is true, if it's sinking then go to smaller size hooks to get it to balance out quite. And when you do that and get those jerk baits to just hover in place, you can just sit there and have yourself a sandwich and give it a little subtle pull. You're not popping it this time of year, just give it enough to make it look, like, alive. So just a little tug and then let it sit again for 30 seconds or a minute. Just wait and wait for the bass to grab it. Trust me, it works.

And the next rig that you want to be throwing this time of year is the Alabama rig or the A rig. These work exceptionally well because again the bait fish have schooled up while the bass are keying in on them big time. What you want, again, is smaller profile bait. So like a two-and-a-half-inch to three-and-a-half-inch paddle tail, swim bait is what you want. Put them on like eighth-ounce jig heads. And the key thing here is right now you want to get it right down on the bottom and just let it crawl along the bottom, it's barely moving along. So you don't need heavy weights to do that. It might take you a while to get it down to the bottom, but once you're down there you want to be able to move it along steadily. If it's too heavy, you got to move it too quick to keep it up above the bottom, so real light jig heads is all you need.

Make sure you check your state regulations too because some states don't allow you to have more than two or three hooks on a lure, and so some of those baits may have to be dummy baits where they don't have a hook on them. Fortunately, there's plenty of manufacturers out there today that manufacture to make those kind of Alabama rigs, so you can get one that matches your state rigs. No problem. Just make sure you check it out. So those are the baits you need to be throwing in December. Trust me, you can catch them despite being cold out there. You're gonna be colder than the fish are but when you start catching them, you're gonna forget about how cold you are.