What's up guys? Michael Neal here with Bass Resource. Wintertime is one of those times where you know we really didn't know a lot about how the fish acted, but as we're starting to get more and more people into bass fishing we're starting to learn some more that they're really all about the baitfish just like they are in the fall and that's all they're going to concentrate on all winter long until they start moving up and start to go think about spawning for their pre-spawn stages. And when they're really focused on baitfish, soft plastic jerk baits are really hard to beat.
There's so many different ways to fish them, really not a wrong one, but to me one of the best ones that we've got now especially with forward-facing sonar and live scope is really just a jig head minnow. So this is really just as simple as it gets you know fluke style or soft plastic jerk baits have been around for years and years and just traditional lid heads as people used to call them or jig heads have as well, but it's really emerged in the last several years as a wintertime bait. And this is a 4 inch Scentsation Slim Minnow and a Big Bite Swimmer Head. This is a three sixteenths.
Typically, in the wintertime those fish are going to start being a little bit deeper down into that 10 to 20 foot range in a lot of places. Your super clear impoundments even down in that 50 to 75 foot range. So your weight is really going to vary depending on how deep you're trying to fish, but the one thing I will say about that is the lightest that you can get away with the better off you're going to be. So if you're fishing super deep, you're not going to be able to wait on an eighth or three sixteenths to get down there. You're going to have to go up to a quarter, three eighths or a half something like that, but if the fish are not swimming very fast just make sure you're going as light as you can and trying to hit them because when they're really lethargic in the wintertime they're cold-blooded they're not going to be moving around very fast, you've got to keep this bait moving as slow as you can and keep it above them. That's the rule number one is never let this thing break their line of sight.
If you think about it, a bass when...his eyes are more up towards the top of his head so he's always looking upward to some degree. If you let this bait get down below him he's not going to be near as interested and then in that cold water he's more than likely not going to chase it down.
Number one key to this is a loop knot. It's going to give the bait way more action than anything that's tied directly to the hook and that's a really big deal. When you're doing this it's not going to have the action just reeling it like a swimbait would with a paddle tail. It's just going to have a very gentle rocking side to side that's just going to be imparted with your rod tip and that's all because of this loop knot. If you tie it directly to it it's not going to be able to swing side to side. That's why I like this Scentsation Slim Minnow. It's got flatter sides on it. So it's going to allow the bait to have that natural rocking shimmy action much like a dying shad would have in those cold frigid water temperatures.
With this, this really reminded me of another technique when this jighead minnow came out that really originated from East Tennessee where I grew up and it's called tightlining. Basically, fishing a jighead minnow is tightlining and tightlining for crappie the same thing except they did it up on the small mouthy type lakes, your Cherokees, Douglas's, Wataugas, Boone, South Holston all up in there is where it originated but you're just going to find your steeper places where bass have been caught all winter long for years and years. Your bluff walls, your points, big chunk rock banks, channel swings, things like that that have either deep water right up against them or really deep water really close to them and that's the whole key to the winter time is they're going to feel like they have somewhere to escape to go to that deeper water and with tightlining or the jighead minnow technique, the rod to me is very important.
I've always liked longer rods, you know, seven to seven and a half foot, even in a spinning rod but the more I've paid attention to trends and the more I've tried playing around with different rods this is 100% my go-to. It's a Denali Lithium Pro 6 foot 10...6 foot 10 medium light finesse rod and really and truly you could 100% crappie fish with this rod. It's very similar to the blank of one. When you set the hook it's going to bend all the way down to this first guide and to me that's what does give the bait the action is this slow moderate taper of a medium light. If you just take a bait, you could try it for yourself at home, put it on a crappie rod, tie this loop knot, shake it beside the boat, it's going to have a lot of rocking action. You go to a longer stiffer rod it's going to have the rocking action when you hit that rhythm just right but being able to throw the slack to the bait is what's going to give it that perfect action.
One other way that's been slept on a lot especially the last few years is a float-n-fly. So you can take the same setup. You want a real lightweight, somewhere in that eighth ounce range typically, put a float somewhere between 6 and 10 feet. Sometimes you need a slip float, sometimes just a tip float depending on the depth but fish those bluff walls, those channel swings, those points. You're going to need a longer rod for that. You're really not trying to put as much action with that float-n-fly as you're just trying to hover the bait steady in place and let those fish come to it. So that's when I would go with like a 7 feet 6 inches to an 8 foot spinning rod to really get that long leader out there. But those are three great ways.
You know, another thing that comes to mind in the wintertime is shad kills and that's when the temperatures really plummet and you know it really just stuns the bait fish and actually kills them and that's when I like to go with a weighted hook, a weighted screw lock hook like this right here, the Gamakatsu Superline Spring Lock Hook and the weight, again, is just going to vary on how deep you're trying to get this bait.
On your clear water...bodies of water you're going to want a heavier bait. On your dingier waters, you're going to want a little bit lighter weight but it's...I like this...the belly weight instead of a Texas rig because I want this bait to fall parallel to the bottom or the surface. I don't want it to fall nose first. I want it to seem just like a dying shad. I'm really not going to impart any action on this bait. I'm just going to give it some slow pulls and just try and work it through the water column, count it down, figure out how deep you want that bait to be and then try and keep it in the strike zone.
Again, in the wintertime, you don't want to have something with a whole ton of action most of the time so the more natural you can get, the more natural colors, the more natural size of your body of water the better off you're going to be. This thing is going to be the same locations as your points, channel swings, bluffs, anything related to the channel is going to be your best bet for this. Bluffs is by far my number one. They have so much option on a bluff wall of where to get. A lot of times your bluffs have ledges that stick out. Some will be 10 feet, some will be 20, 25, 30, etc. but wherever you have a bluff wall they can go straight up and down on that same bank and be in whatever depth they want. A lot of times in the wintertime, that will change throughout the day. When the sun comes out, starts warming up the upper reaches of that water just a little bit sometimes they'll slide up but that's when I really like to go with that is a shad kill.
I like a longer rod just a, you know, a standard worm setup for this. It's a 7 foot 4 medium heavy Lithium Pro from Denali. It's my go-to for any kind of worm fishing, Carolina rigging, etc. But to me this is just like fishing a soft plastic stick bait that's going to be weightless that you're just trying to throw out there and fish slowly, keep it in that strike zone, keep it looking as natural as possible.
For a reel, I'm going to go with the Novus Elite and I like 16 pound Shooter just a really all-around go-to for anything that's high impact for me and this is what will be one of those high impact raw baits where I'm really going to set the hook and drive it home.
Last but not least, you know, underspins are a staple for wintertime fishing and this is the spring lock spinner from Gamakatsu. It's just a weighted hook just like the last setup I showed but it has this blade and this one's going to be completely weightless so if you want to throw it around, you know, stand in timber, brush piles, on herring lakes especially, this is a really big player. Fishing ditches, fishing drains where the bait fish actually get in the bottoms of those drains and ditches, throw this thing out there, let it hit the bottom, maintain a slow steady crawl throughout the retrieve or if you're fishing, you know, around not much cover at all you can go with a traditional fish head spin style underspin bait with just an exposed hook but to me this spring lock spinner is very versatile. You can fish it through all kinds of cover.
I don't like a big super heavy rod or long rod for this technique. I use the same one for either the open hook or this spring lock spinner. This is a 7 foot 2 covert medium heavy worm and jig rod. It's just a super versatile rod for me. I think it's one of the best all-around rods Denali has in their lineup. Same reel, same line as the last setup but again, it's all just about finding the bait fish whether that's out in 50 or 70 feet of water but the number one common denominator for fishing all winter long is the creek channels or the river channel.
Used to...a lot of people kind of stayed away from the actual river channel but as we're learning more and more with forward-facing technology and better graphs and so forth we're learning that fish really didn't act the way that we thought they did. They go a lot deeper, they get in a lot bigger schools. We didn't have the technology to be able to get out there and fish for them but that's a really big deal now and creek channels and river channels is where all the bait goes and congregates. It doesn't matter if you're fishing a lake like Hartwell or Dale Hollow that is, you know, several hundred feet deep in places and the river channel, the tops of the sides are 100 feet deep and the bottom is 120, 150, they're still going to relate to that natural creek channel or natural river channel. I'm not sure what it is that keeps them there, if it's some sort of current that still travels that old channel path that it used to but that is your number one areas to look. So if you're...you don't have live scope or you don't like live scope, wherever those channel swings up against something, a point, a bluff or whatever it may be, those are always hot spots.
I think the deal with the blades is it kind of mimics another a school of bait together. You're not just looking at one bait fish, you're looking at a couple. When these fish are out there in the wintertime they're not really looking 2 feet a whole lot. Being cold-blooded they don't have to eat near as much as they do in the spring, summer and fall. So when you can mimic a couple of bait fish together you also up your chances. So make sure you match the hatch, go small when you need to go small, fish slowly, try and mimic that shad kill and stay around the channels and hopefully that'll help you catch some wintertime bass on soft plastic jerk baits. Check out Bass Resource for all your bass fishing needs.
