Bass fishing in the winter months can be tricky, especially if you are new to the idea of winter fishing. However daunting, it may seem the winter months can offer some of the best fishing for numbers, as well as fish of a lifetime.
To understand the winter months you need to first understand what bass do in the fall. It’s no secret that in the fall you can catch bass on an assortment of lures, swimbaits, poppers, crankbaits, etc. But why? Bass are in a feeding frenzy to gain the number of nutrients they need to survive the winter. A largemouth or smallmouth bass can slow its metabolism down in the winter to not expend any unnecessary energy, this is why winter bass are so lethargic.
Where do they go in the winter months?
During the winter months, bass tend to relate to almost the same structures you will find them on during the summer. The name of the game is simple. Access to deep water to ambush bait, rock piles, channel swings, bluff wall channel swings, drains/ditches, points, secondary points, and anything else that can hold heat from the sun during these shorter days.
How do I find the fish in these areas?
Look for key high-percentage areas within the main target. If you are fishing a bluff wall, for instance, find the point on that wall where the creek channel completely butts against it creating a shelf in the wall for bass to sit on and around as a means to ambush prey for an easy meal. A rule of thumb for me is to always fish the turns in points and only just the face of the point. For this, boat positioning is key. You want to parallel the bank on the turn of the point and make fan casts at 5 to 10 foot increments until you get bit, or find the type of structure your fish are relating too.
Common misconceptions
There are a lot of common misconceptions about fishing through the winter, some are true and a lot of them are actually false. The first one I always hear is, “you need to downsize.” while this may be the case for some lakes regarding the forage it is nowhere near the blanket statement some make it out to be. As I mentioned before, bass slow their metabolisms so they do not have to eat as much in the winter. However, a bass is a very opportunistic feeder and predator meaning it will not hesitate to engulf a meal that they deem is worth the expulsion of energy. What I mean by this is that a lot of times a big bass will watch a small bait go by in the winter because it is simply not worth their time or energy. However, if you drag a ¾ oz jig with a pork chunk or beaver in front of them 9 times out of 10 you can trigger a feed response.
A second misconception would be the topic of slowing down during the winter. While again this may be the case day to day, it is not always true. Have you ever noticed how some days you just can’t buy a bite without banging that square bill off a laydown? Or rolling a spinner bait over a log? That is because you are triggering a core feed response in the bass’s genetics causing them to have no choice but to lash out and attack the bait that is causing all of that commotion. The same tactic can be applied to winter fishing just in a different light. I have had days where you cannot reel a rkcrawler or DT fast enough, and again what you are doing by that is triggering a core reaction from the fish without them even wanting to eat. So the next time you go out and are fishing slow and not getting any bites, try to speed up and make them bite.
So, before you go and winterize your outboard this winter, I hope you can gain some confidence from this article and go out headhunting this winter for the biggest bass of the year or maybe even of your life.
