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All right, guys, it's wintertime. And if you don't have hard water and if you like to get out there and enjoy the water when there's not any water skiers or a lot of activity out there, this time of year is for you. Because when you're fishing, you might not get a lot of bites, but when you do, it could be a trophy of a lifetime. They're big this time of year. So there's five different tactics that I like to use during this time of year. I'm going to get to that in a second. But before I do, there's two things I want to touch bases on.
First of all, it's cold. This is really cold. Now, if you normally wear a life jacket when the boat's running and then you take it off and you go get up in the front of the boat, like I do, that's how I normally fish, this is the time of year not to do that. Wear your life vest all the time. If you fall overboard in that cold water, hypothermia can take over a lot faster than what you think, no matter how strong of a swimmer you are. Wear a life jacket the whole time you're on the water, period.
The second is bring a lot of warm clothing, even if you don't wear it. The weather forecast, I've been caught by this before, weather forecast, it's supposed to be sunny. So typically, air temps, like, in the 40s, you would dress real warm. But if it's a sunny day, it actually feels like it's close to 60 degrees. So I brought just the clothing that I would expect to be wearing under those conditions, and then I get a fog bank that comes in. And, boy, is that ever cold. And if I don't have extra clothing, you get really cold in a hurry, and it's miserable. So bring or wear a lot of extra clothing. If you don't need them, cool. But if you get cold, if the weather forecast doesn't turn out to be what you thought it was going to be, you're prepared.
All right, with those two things out of the way, let's talk about some tactics for catching these cold water bass. The first one is crankbaits. Now, that kind of seems weird because some people are like, "Crankbaits, that's a fast moving bait. Bass are lethargic. They don't go after fast moving baits." Wrong. Bass are not lethargic in the wintertime, contrary to popular belief. The bait fish and the forage that they go after is moving slow, so you have to think about how you're going to imitate the forage to get bit. But bass can chase down a fast moving bait in the wintertime just as easily as they do in the summertime. They can react and move very quickly. So crankbaits actually do play a role in here. You can elicit some reaction strikes. But primarily, the way to fish them right now is a little bit different than you do during the warmer months, and that is you have to imitate those slower moving bait fish right now.
So a couple of different things. First of all, it's not just a cast and wind to cover a lot of water. Really, this time of year, the bass will concentrate in areas. So you can spend a lot of time fishing areas where the bass aren't there. So instead, spend some time with your side imaging or with forward-facing sonar if you have it, but try to find those areas where bass are congregated. This is typically where there's steeper banks. If you've got some pockets of green weeds that are remaining, even better, or maybe some stump field or some boulders on, say, let's say a sharp point that drops off into the main channel. Those are the places to look at and look for and try to locate bass or at least bassy areas where bass are going to... What they want to do is they want to find a place during the wintertime where they don't have to expend a lot of energy to survive, right? So you want safety and comfort, plus an area where they can feed, and they don't have to move very far. Those are the key areas where they're going to hang their hat on, and they will group up. There'll be large concentrations of them. So find them on your graph first.
Then, break out your crankbait. What I like to do with a crankbait is I like to go over the tops of them first to see what the mood of the fish are and see if I can elicit a strike that way. Sometimes they'll come up and hit it. They're more aggressive, and you don't have to go super slow. A lot of other times, though, you have to slow it down. Get the crankbait down to the depth they're at, give it a few turns of the crank handle, and just let it sit and pause and hang out there in their face. Give it a little twitch. Crank it again. Give it a long pause. Crank it again. Pay attention when you get bit, what you were doing, because you have to try a lot of different cadences. You have a long pause or a short pause or a medium pause. Crank it three turns, four turns, that sort of thing. Just keep mixing and matching, and then suddenly you get bit. Well, what were you doing, right? What happened at that moment? How long of a pause were you doing it? Did you crank it fast before that? Was it a super long pause? Because that's key. It's a critical, critical component. A lot of times, the bass will only want it one way, and you better be paying attention when you get bit so you can replicate that the rest of your day.
A couple of things that I do with the crankbait to get it to stay down there is you want that bait to suspend. So, first of all, getting a suspending crankbait is a good idea. But you can also make a crankbait suspend. How? Well, first of all, by changing the hooks on it to a size larger. Start with the front and work your way back, and sometimes just that change of weight is all that's necessary to get it to suspend correctly. You can also use lead strips, and they stick on the belly of the bait, and that will help. I also use fluorocarbon line. Fluorocarbon tends to be neutrally buoyant or even actually sink a little bit, whereas braid is more buoyant and can actually bring a crankbait up. The other thing is I use no more than 10-pound test line. It helps get that crankbait down to its deepest diving depth and stay down there, and a lot of times, these fish, you know, they're just within reach of the maximum diving depth of the crankbait. So you want to use a thinner diameter line to get that bait down there. So those are some key things to consider when fishing with crankbaits.
Another tactic to use is a good old ball and chain, the Carolina rig. It's been around for decades, and it still catches bass. It's still popular to use, for good reason. It works, especially in colder water when the fish are deeper. Those outside weed lines where you got hard bottoms right next to the weed lines, that's a good area to fish that ball and chain, or a hump or a ridge that's surrounded by deeper water, a ledge. These are all great places where the creek channel swings up close to the bank and you got that steep bank. Good areas to throw a Carolina rig. A couple of things about it, though.
First of all, you want to use a tungsten weight, like a one-ounce tungsten weight. You got more feel with that. You can tell what you're pulling it through, so that really helps. But the main thing is that, well, there's a mistake that a lot of anglers are doing these days that, back in the day, I just sound like an old guy, "Back when I was a kid," we didn't have this problem. And the reason why the Carolina rigs kind of, I think, have fallen out of popularity somewhat, is because the way people are rigging them. A lot of people use fluorocarbon line, which, exactly, that's what I would do as my main line, I would use fluorocarbon line, but they use fluorocarbon line as the leader on the back end of it, 12 to 18 inches, 2 feet, sometimes 5 feet. But they use fluorocarbon for that. Now, fluorocarbon, as I mentioned, kind of sinks, and it keeps the bait on the bottom. And the key benefit of using a Carolina rig is to have that bait up off the bottom so it's more visible. So don't use fluorocarbon leader, okay? You're defeating the purpose. Use mono. Monofilament. I know it's stretchy, guys, but monofilament is buoyant, and it keeps that bait up off the bottom.
A couple of other key things to consider is use floating baits. A floating lizard, a floating worm, something that's got some air bubbles in it that can float up off the bottom helps. And another mistake a lot of guys use, they're using a heavy rod because you got a heavy weight, so they use a stout hook on it, like a flipping hook. Well, the weight of that hook can bring that bait down. So don't do that. Use a regular type of hook, a thin wire hook, a regular thickness hook so it doesn't weigh that bait down. The rod you want to use, you want to just have a fast action on it, not extra fast, just a fast action rod tip. So it's got that extra flex in it so it can accommodate that hook when you give that hook set. It's a sweeping hook set anyway. You don't really yard on it. So you don't necessarily need a heavy-duty flipping hook. But those things are what...that's the mistake people...they don't pay attention to that, and then they're just dragging the bait on the bottom, and it kind of ruins the effectiveness of our Carolina rig. So keep that in mind.
Again, just real slow, lethargic moves. The bait fish is moving slow, so you want to imitate that with the Carolina rig. Work it slow through all that cover along those outside weed lines and you're going to get bit.
The next tactic uses rattling crankbaits, you know, like lipless crankbaits. This tactic, you're going to fish them differently than what you do during the summer months. It's a lot different here. You're fishing deeper. You're actually targeting areas. You're not covering water. Again, the fish are concentrated, so don't waste time just casting and winging and covering a lot of water. Find them first with the depth finder. It's going to be a little bit deeper. Rock piles are great, any kind of drop-off, creek channels. They might be right in the very bottom of the creek channel. But essentially, what you're doing is when the water temp gets in the 40s, especially the lower 40s, bait fish are dying off. Some bait fish are. There are certain types of species that don't do well in cold water. And this is what you want to imitate.
What you do is you throw your rattle in like a Rat-L-Trap or a One Knocker, what have you, throw it out there, let it fall away to the bottom, and you want to use your rod to lift it up off the bottom and then guide it back down. Okay? You're not ripping it off the bottom and dropping it. Not fast action. This is the key difference. This is the difference between getting bit and not getting bit this time of year. You want to lift it up off the bottom and get it to rattle a little bit and then let it glide and drop and rattle as it falls back down. Let it sit on the bottom for a while. Pause. Count one, two, three. Again, the duration between pauses matters. You're going to have to experiment with that. How high you lift it up off the bottom and let it fall back down also matters. So again, like I said earlier, pay real close attention to what you're doing when you get bit so you can replicate it again the rest of the day as you're fishing. But that's a great tactic to use this time of year.
Now, the next one is really fun for you guys who like jerkbaits because it's using jerkbaits, okay? Jerkbaits, they imitate those bait fish that are moving slowly or struggling to survive. A jerkbait is a perfect imitator to that. A couple of things about it. First of all, you want a suspending jerkbait so you can slow it down and pause in between. It's not going to float back up to the surface. Just like the other baits I mentioned, you want to pay attention to that cadence. But you want your deeper, deep diving, medium diving, shallow diving, baits that dive at different depths.
You want different sizes. A lot of times, the smaller-sized jerkbait works better this time of year than the longer sizes. You also want them made by different manufacturers. You want to have a blend of jerkbaits from different types of brands in different sizes and different colors. This is not the time of year to throw your favorite jerkbait. The bass will key on on a specific type of action, which different brands will have different actions and different types of diving depths and looks and the way that they act in the water. Some have rattles, some don't. So it's going to take a while to figure out what it is the bass want, and you have to experiment and be open to trying different brands, different depths, different cadences until you come up with that combination that the bass want that day.
The key thing is, again, with suspending, and this is with the crankbaits earlier, by the way, with the suspending baits, you can play with the weights of the hooks to get them to finally neutrally suspend exactly how you want it that day. Here's a tip. For all you guys who don't watch my videos, you know I give good tips towards the end or somewhere in the middle. A lot of guys have stopped watching this point. So this is for you. The suspending characteristic of those baits will change day to day as the water temperature changes. So you may dial it in that day, and it works great, and it's perfectly suspending. And then you come back the next weekend, and guess what, it's not sinking or it's rising. That will happen.
So before you start throwing these baits, even though you dialed it in last weekend, check it and change your hooks out or the amount of weight you have on it to get it to suspend the way you want to before you start using it again. That's a key. So it takes some playing around with these jerkbaits to finally figure out what it is those bass want, but you key up on those same areas I told you about, and you find where those bass are congregated, and you get the correct jerkbait for that day at the right depth and the right action, and, man, you can have yourself a heck of a day.
Now, the last tactic involves jigs. Again, it's different here in the dead of winter than it is the rest of the year. Jigs this time of year, you're not hopping it and dropping it and lots of pitching and casting. You're throwing it and letting it crawl on the bottom. And it depends on where you're fishing it as to what kind of jig you're throwing. For example, if you found those patches of weeds, those green weeds, and you're bringing it through that, well, you're going to get hung up if you're using an open hook or you're using a football jig or something. So a round ball jig or an Arkie style jig is better to snake it through. You want to crawl it through, drag it through those weeds. If you're on the outside of those weeds or if you're in an area where there isn't any weeds, a football jig works better because it makes the jig kind of wobble back and forth, gives that little bit of an action to it. Works great for that.
What you're doing is you're slowly bringing it down through this kind of the cover on the bottom. You're casting it out, let sink to the bottom, use your rod tip to pull it through, and watch your rod tip as you bring it through. Now, you can control how fast it's moving and how far it's moving by watching your rod. It's a lot harder to do by reeling it because now you have to figure out how many inches per turn per handle you're moving, and you can't tell what you're doing with it very well. It's harder. So just use your rod, drag it along the bottom, pause, reel up that slack, and do it again. Again, it's going to vary. Just like every single thing I've told you about here, it's going to vary. How fast you do it, how far you move it, and how long your pauses are matter. So if you're not getting bit, experiment with that. Make sure again you're in an area where the fish are congregated because you might be doing the right thing in an area where the fish aren't at, and you're still not going to get bit. So make sure you're near where the bass are.
The other thing is the trailer on it. This time of year, you want a trailer that doesn't have a lot of action to it, like a Zoom Chunk or a V&M. The type of trailers that don't have a lot of movement, those are the ones that don't have edges on them. They just kind of stay there flat. That's what you want, not a whole lot of movement to them because these crawdads are very lethargic and moving very slowly. You want to imitate that. So something that's got a lot of action to it, sticks up, and moves around, that looks unnatural. So jigs working at that deep and working it very slow and methodically is another way to get bit.
All five of these ways, when you're out in the water this time of year, one of them is going to work. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com.
