Keri: Come here you little feisty thing. You are a feisty thing. Come hither. You are a feisty one. Not happy at all about having that in his mouth. Another little drop shot bass. Come hither. Another little guy. He was, like, almost behind the boat. They're cold.
Glenn: Hey, folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com and today I want to talk about wintertime fishing. It can be tough. It can be slow. It can be cold and uncomfortable. The bites can be few and far between. But when you do get bit it's usually a really good fish. Sometimes it's a trophy. So it's worth the effort. So today I wanna talk about the top nine baits that I use in the wintertime, how to fish 'em and where to fish 'em, and hopefully that will help you be more productive this wintertime.
Starting with the grub. Yeah, this is a bait that doesn't get used very often but a 3-inch or a 5-inch grub, I'll put that on a 1/4-ounce open jig head. This is kinda my go-to bait during the wintertime. I fish it deep. Fish it deeper than 15-feet deep, often up to 50-feet deep. And in those instances I'm using just a white grub because the water clarity is clear but the light penetration typically doesn't get down that deep, especially if it's a cloudy day. And so alls I'm looking for is contrast, something to show up against the background of the bottom of the lake. So a white grub is what I use.
And all I'm doing is I'm just dragging it. I'm dragging it over points, over humps, over rock piles, creek beds and ledges, I like steep banks, anything like that I just drag it, drag it slowly across. I'll let the boat drift me sometimes just if there's a little bit of a wind. And I'll pause it. Give it long pauses in between, 3 to 4 seconds at the minimum, sometimes more than 30 seconds. The pause sometimes is key to fishing this bait, is how long that pause is sometimes is what you need to figure out what the bass want.
But slow drag. Don't lift it up off the bottom. Don't give it any pops, any super lot of action, just a slow, steady drag is all you need and that white grub can be dynamite during this time of year.
All right, the next bait I wanna talk about is the crankbaits, specifically medium and deep-diving crankbaits. These work best for me in the early part of the winter and the later part of the winter, actually when winter begins to transition to early spring. Those two periods when it's a little bit warmer tend to work best. When there's a little bit of a chop in the water, little bit of wind, maybe cloudy cover, that's when I break 'em out. That brings those fish up a little bit, especially if you've had a warming trend. Say, for example, you've had a week of rain with a little bit warmer temperatures, warm rain will warm up the shallows faster than straight sunshine. And if you've had steady weather for a few days, four or five days of steady weather, that type of thing will bring those fish up shallower, less than 15-feet deep, that's gonna bring out these medium divers. And even down to 20-feet, get a deep diver and get down there.
Alls I'm doing is I'm fishing steep banks, I'm fishing those points. If there's any humps that top out shallower than 15-feet deep, I'll fish those as well. Any deep weed lines that's still green, the outer weed lines are really good to fish these crankbaits.
I'm just using either a shad color crankbait or crawdad color crankbait, and you just wanna crank it down there and then retrieve it at a medium speed with frequent pauses in between. It's a key thing is frequent pauses. And when do start to retrieve after pausing it, experiment with that. Sometimes just starting to reel again is all you need just to get it moving again and they'll strike it when that movement occurs. Sometimes a quick pop or snap can trigger a bite. So experiment with those pauses and how you start the retrieve after the pause and you catch a lot of fish that way. Crankbaits in the wintertime. Who knew?
The next lure I like to use during the wintertime is the blade bait. This is a bait that's proven over decades. It works great during the wintertime. It's very simple to use. What makes it so productive is it's a small bite-sized meal basically. And it has a tight vibration which is key during the wintertime, the tighter the vibration, the better. It's also a heavy piece of metal that just casts like a bullet. It doesn't have a lot of wind resistance, so it's very easy to cast, which is what you need for the presentation.
What I do is I throw it out across deep points. I'm fishing in deeper than 15 feet deep, sometimes up to 40, 50 feet deep. Cast it out over these humps, ridges, rock piles, creek ledges, any kind of difference in the bottom contours is what I'm looking for, something different. Cast it way out. Let it get down near the bottom, almost on the bottom. And here, I just slowly crank it, just nice and slow. I want to maintain bottom content, but I don't want it to be bouncing on the bottom. I want to keep it off the bottom, but every once in a while I hit in the bottom so I know it's down there and just slowly crank it back. Sometimes I give it a little pop, and let it flutter back down and hit the bottom, and then pick up real and again, just to make sure I'm in contact with it. And that little pop and that flutter sometimes is what you need. Sometimes it goes like yo yo action. Just bring it up and then let it drop down, hit the bottom, and pop it back up slowly, and let drop right back down. That falling action, sometimes you'll get bites that way. But usually just a straight, steady, slow retrieve over this bottom structure is all you need for wintertime fishing.
Okay. So the next lure that I like to use is a jig, specifically I use two different kinds of jigs during the wintertime. One is a rubber skirted jig and the other is a hair jig. So let's start with a rubber skirted jig. There's two ways I fish that. The most common way that I fish it is deep, deeper than 15-feet deep. I wanna crawl it over any kinda structure down there. Now because I'm that deep there's less weeds and more rocks. So couple things about that. I need to adapt. One is I'm using a football head jig because you crawl on the rocks, it just moves along, wobbles, looks like a little crawdad, but I'm also using fluorocarbon line because rocks will chew up braid faster than it will fluorocarbon, believe it or not. And when you catch a real nice fish on a jig, typically they're big in the wintertime, last thing you wanna do is have a break-off on a big fish because you've been dragging that braid over all those rocks for the past hour or two. So I use fluorocarbon. The other advantage of fluorocarbon is that in the wintertime the lakes tend to be clearer and you're moving at a slower pace and so the bass have more time to examine your offering. So fluorocarbon is less visible in the water than braid.
And I'm dragging it over all this structure. I'm looking for deep rock piles and humps, ledges. I'm looking for creek channels, points, and steep banks, anything like that, that's the kinda thing I wanna focus on. And I'll just drag it over this stuff. I'm not hopping it and jumping it. Crawdads are out during the wintertime. They don't hibernate but they are very lethargic. They don't move very fast. So you don't want to hop it and jump it and give it all kinds of action. In addition, I change the trailer. Whereas in the summertime I'll use like a Rage Bug or Rage Craw trailer, where it has a lot of action. Those flappers just move a lot in the water. Wintertime, I'll change that up. I'll use a Zoom Chunk or maybe a V&M Cherry Bug, something that doesn't move a whole lot but still looks like the shape of a crawdad. That's what I want to have. And then like I said, I drag it over the stuff with long pauses in between. I'll give it up to, you know, maybe 4 or 5 seconds pause all the way up to 30 seconds and experiment with the duration of that pause. That is more key than anything else when you're fishing the wintertime is how long you wait before you move that bait again. So you need to experiment with that to figure out what that cadence is and zero in on that and you'll catch more fish.
The other way that I fish a rubber jig is if I'm fishing a lake that has a winter drawdown, when they start to draw that lake down, what happens is the crawdads will come out of their mud holes and outta their crevices. They gotta move deep. They gotta get down below that frost line. So the bass know this, and they come up shallow and they start feeding on those crawdads. So I'll take that jig and I'll fish it like I do in the spring and the wintertime. And I'm flipping it and pitching it and casting it to everything I can see, any kind of visible cover, mostly docks but also you can find rocks and logs, any kid of weed edges as long as the weeds are still green, sunken trees, stump rows, whatever you can find up to 15-feet deep. And, you know, if you've had a stretch of warm weather or stable weather, well along with that drawdown that's perfect conditions. You can have yourself a really good day. So don't miss out on that opportunity.
Now, hair jigs. There's two ways I fish hair jigs. One is just like the rubber skirted jig. I fish it deep, using a 1/4-ounce to 1/2-ounce jig, football head jig and just crawling it over everything down there. I don't use a trailer with these. I'm trying to resemble more something like a sculpin or bait fish that's crawling along on the mud down there.
So no Craw trailer. The other way I'll fish it is if there's a school of bait fish. Sometimes this happens with perch and sometimes with shad. During the wintertimes they'll ball up, be a little bit offshore, kinda suspended over deeper water. If you find those on your depth finder, it's a tight ball, that usually means you have predators around that are feeding on them, typically bass. If it's a loose ball of shad or whatever, then they're not under attack, there probably aren't any bass around. But if you find that tight ball, what I'll do is I'll take that hair jig and I'll drop it right through that school. I wanna get it down through the bottom because typically what the bass are doing, they're sitting underneath and they're feeding on those bait fish as they're dying off or struggling. So you get that hair jig right down and come through that ball of shad and you'll get whacked. You'll definitely get hit. Sometimes I'll have to heavy up a little bit, especially if it's perch because they like hair jigs, too. So I needed to punch through that ball of bait fish first before it gets to the bass. But yeah, that can be a real productive way to fish and catch bass during the wintertime. So jigs.
Another bait I like to use is the 4-inch plastic Finesse Worm, specifically a hand-poured Finesse Worm. Now the reason I like hand-poured is because in the wintertime when the water temperature gets below 50 degrees, plastics tend to lose some of their flexibility. They're not as pliable so they don't have as much movement in 'em. A Finesse Worm, although it doesn't have a lot of appendages, it has a natural worm movement, the hand pours, they will stiffen up a little bit in that colder water, but because they're so flexible to begin with, they actually look really natural and normal in the colder temperature. So that's why I like hand pour. I usually use, like I love the Don Iovino hand pours, there's several others on the West Coast that make hand pours. You can find them everywhere really.
The one exception would be for mass-produced would be the Roboworms. Those look and feel like hand pours and they work just as well in the wintertime. So if you can't find any actual hand pours or can't afford those, go with the Roboworms.
But what I'll do is I'll put those on a drop shot rig and on a split shot rig. I'll use the split shot rig to find fish and I'm fishing deeper than 15-feet, sometimes as deep as 50, and I'm looking for structure. Anything that's different from the bottom contour. So humps, ridges, ledges, rock piles, those kinda things. I like steeper points, steep banks. Those type of things is what I'm looking for. And I just drag that split shot over the top of that cover or that structure, I mean. And sometimes I just let the wind just kinda drift the boat along and I'll pause it. I'll make long pauses in between such as 4 seconds, up to a 30-second long pause. And when I do move it I'm lifting it and hopping it off the bottom or twitching it or shaking it or giving it any of that extra action. Just slow and steady drag on the bottom.
Once I do get bit then I'll switch over to a drop shot and I'll pinpoint that specific area where they bit. So for example it was a rock pile or it was on a point. I'll work it thoroughly with that drop shot, vertically jigging it. The difference is in the summertime I may use an 18-inch leader, maybe longer than that, but in the wintertime I'm using an 8 to 10-inch leader. Because these fish are right on the bottom I wanna get this right to them. And I'll just let it hang out. You know, just maybe move that rod tip just slightly, just subtle movements, if that. But just let it sit in place and maybe let the wind kinda drift the boat a little bit. But slowly work it slowly. This is why I use the split shot first to find the fish. Once you get bit, typically in the wintertime the fish are congregated. They kind of school up. So if you catch a fish in an area, there's generally more in that area. This is why I go back to the drop shot to work that area more thoroughly to pick off as many fish as I can. So a 4-inch Finesse Worm, that is key to this presentation.
The next bait I wanna talk about is the 3/4-ounce spinnerbait. Yeah, I said 3/4-ounce. Heavy spinnerbait. I'll use a white one with a little bit of chartreuse in it and the blades are typically either a Double Colorado...or Double Indiana blades, or single Colorado blade. The Colorado is the one I use the most.
There's two ways that I fish that. One is what you might expect, just slow rolling it. Get it down to that deep structure that I've been talking about, same places, and here you just wanna slowly, slowly crank it real slow over that cover and that structure, just letting that Colorado blade just [vocalization] along. Heavy thumper. You'll feel that rod tip just thumping along. Give it a pause every now and then. Let it sink back down to make sure you're still in contact with that bottom and then just slowly roll it along. And that's all you need to do. You can't believe how many fish you catch just doing that alone.
But another way that I like to fish it with those, especially if it's got a Colorado blade, is to helicopter it. So let it fall vertically. Throw it out over a point and let it fall straight down. It just falls like this with that little blade just helicoptering as it goes down. Lotta times it gets bit before it even hits the bottom. Can be a very effective way to fish offshore structure, offshore cover.
I was fishing with a friend of mine and I don't know why, but for whatever reason he didn't rig up his rods the night before and I was ready to go. We parked it out over a point and I caught three fish fishing a 3/4-ounce spinnerbait just like that before he actually he was all tied on ready to go. He wasn't too happy about it. But that was the game plan. That's how it worked that day, is I wanted it to fall vertically. It works best with a short arm spinnerbait, but it still works well if you got a long arm spinnerbait. So don't hesitate to try that during the wintertime. You'll be surprised how effective that can be.
All right, so the next bait that I wanna talk about is the suspending jerkbait. I like fishing a suspending jerkbait because it resembles a dying or, you know, a bait fish that's struggling to stay alive, struggling to stay upright, which is an easy meal for bass. So I fish these on fluorocarbon line because the water's really clear and it's a slow presentation so the bass have a lot of time to examine your lure, and I don't want that lure to look unnatural to them. So fluorocarbon is what I use. I get a suspending jerkbait that dives to at least 10 feet, if not deeper. And I wanna fish these over weed beds, specifically if I can find deep weed edges, if I can find points, maybe at the top of a hump or a ridge, steep banks, that type of thing. The best time to fish this is when the water temperature's taken a plunge, you've had a cold snap. And maybe now there's a high pressure system sitting overhead. That's usually when the bass kinda pull off and they suspend a little bit and that's the perfect time to get them with the suspending jerkbait. Cast it out there, wind it down quick, get it down to the depth that they're at and then let it hang out. Just let it sit.
And this is the key to fishing a suspending jerkbait, is how long you wait until you twitch it again. Wait at least 3 to 4 seconds, sometimes up to 30 seconds, and I've been known to wait up to a minute. And when you twitch it, that's what you do, it's a slight twitch. You're just resembling this bait fish that's struggling to remain upright, struggling to remain alive. So you're not popping it, no hard snaps this time like you would do during the summertime. It's a twitch. And then you park it again. And the cadence, the duration between twitches, that's what you need to experiment with. That is key to catching those fish. So once you do get a bite, remember how far apart that was before your last twitch and try to mimic that, you'll start catching more and more fish. You could try every once in a while a hard snap. Sometimes that gets their attention. Occasionally you can get a bite out of that. But as a general rule, slight twitches, long pauses, that's how you fish it during the wintertime.
Now another bait that is proven over the decades that continues to work every winter is the jigging spoon. Jigging spoon is really interesting how that works because it doesn't look like anything. It's not anything natural, it's just a slab of metal. But its action mimics exactly what the bass are keying on during the wintertime, and that's dying bait fish.
What it does is when it falls it wobbles, it twists, it tumbles, it darts maybe one way then starts to fall this way. That's exactly what a dying bait fish does down deep. It can't swim straight. And so that action is what you're trying to mimic and get the bass to trigger. So what you do is you throw it out over deep structure, everything I've talked about so far, the same pieces of structure, but this is a vertical presentation, not horizontal. So drop it down straight down over this structure and then alls you're doing is you're giving it a good snap. You're snapping the rod up, usually a longer rod, 7, 7-1/2-foot rod is good for this because you want to pop off that bottom and then as it falls, follow that with your rod tip. The same rate of fall as the bait is falling. This is called letting it fall in a semi slack line.
You're doing this for two reasons. One, spoons are notorious for getting hung up in your line, so you wanna make sure you have a somewhat tight line so it doesn't do that. And also the bites always occur on the fall. And it's easier to detect if you've got some kind of connection between you and the bait as it's falling. So have it on that semi slack line as it falls. Just pop it and let it fall and then pop it again, let it fall. You have to experiment with the duration of your pauses in between popping it. Sometimes just popping and popping and popping is all you need to do. But a lotta times in the wintertime you may have to wait. Give it a pause. Give it a four or five second pause and maybe longer in between those pops to get that bite. But it can be a real productive way to pick off a school of bass that are sitting on top of a hump or a ridge in deeper water. You can catch a bunch of them really quick doing it that way. So jigging spoons.
Colors. I use either silver or gold. Because you're fishing deep, I'm fishing 20-feet, 25-feet deep, 30-feet deep, there's not a lotta light penetration down there, so there's not a lotta colors that you can see down there. So simple silver or gold, and that's all the colors I have. That's it. That's all you really need.
I start with a 1/8-ounce spoon and I'll move up to there to see what kinda weight I need. If it's windy out I may use a little bit heavier just so I can maintain contact with that bait. But that's about it. Simple way of fishing it, but you can catch a lot of fish on a jigging spoon.
The next bait I wanna talk about is the underspin. This is a bait that's been around for a long, long time because it works, especially in the dead of winter, in the coldest part of winter, that's when an underspin seems to shine the most. That little blade on the bottom, that little bit of extra flash, sometimes that's all you need to get that extra bite. What I'll do is 'll thread on a little plastic bait that either looks like a shad or maybe a small paddle tail, little boot tail, paddle tail on there, like a 3-inch trailer on there, and I'll cast this out over deep structure, deeper than 15-feet deep. And again, I just want it to get down there and I want to just slowly reel it over the top of this stuff. I wanna keep it up off the bottom but close near the bottom. And just a slow, steady cadence, that's all you really need to do and that little blade will keep moving or that little trailer, it's very simple. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll just drag it. If it's windy enough I'll just cast it out and I'll let the wind move me along, just pulling it up over the tops of that top of a hump or a point, sometimes those steep banks work really well. Just drag it along that, as long as it's not touching the bottom, keeping that blade moving, that's all you need and it works. It's a simple way of fishing it, but it can be very effective.
All right, so those are my top nine baits that I use during the wintertime. I hope that helps you catch more fish this winter. For more tips and tricks like this, visit BassResource.com.
