We've been told time and again that cold water means sluggish bass. They are, after all, cold blooded, so cold water means a low metabolic rate, which translates to low energy levels. Logy fish that won't move very far or very fast to investigate a potential meal. That same low metabolic rate means that what food they do eat, they digest slowly, which equates to a long time between meals.
Given all the above negatives, a bass angler could easily come to the conclusion that fishing for bass in cold water is a losing proposition. But at least for those anglers who understand the ins-and-outs of frigid water bass fishing, it's anything but. In fact, many consider it about the best time of the year to catch bass.
Successful wintertime anglers know that bass in most environments bunch up during the winter. Especially in waterbodies that present a harsh environment, bass accumulate in those areas that offer a touch more environmental stability during the cold months, and the population density in those areas skyrockets. If you know where the fish aggregate, you can make what otherwise seems like a loosing proposition into a fishing bonanza. Few of the fish might be willing to bite at any given moment, but when you're dragging your lure past dozens of them on each cast, the odds definitely go up.
Mass exposure helps tip the odds back in your direction, but no matter how many fish see your lure, getting bit isn't automatic. You've still got to elicit a strike response, and the ability to draw attention from disinterested fish is what separates the consistently successful wintertime anglers from the pack. Slow moving, jig type presentations and vertical approaches increase the time a fish has to react to the lure. But most anglers know enough to fish that way in cold water, yet some catch far more fish, far more frequently.
Former RedMan All American qualifier, J. J. Ziolkowski Jr. is one of those anglers who really comes into his own when the water temperature drops under 45 degrees. "When the fish get holed up in the winter," according to the Danbury, CT native, "you've got to work on them until you find out what size and weight lure they want. The colder the water is, the more the extremes come into play, and the middle-ground becomes less productive. It's either real small and light, or real big and heavy."
Ziolkowski's wintertime favorites include 5/8 and 3/4 ounce living rubber jigs dressed with pork frogs —- "... any color, so long as it's mostly black ..." and his "Sweetwater Chub" soft plastic, fished as a grub, on a 1/16 to 1/8 ounce jig head. "The Chub has no real body action of its own," Ziolkowski explains. "It just kind of glides around down there, and some days, bass will grab that when anything that looks energetic goes untouched."
Marty Wencek, and avid angler with a background in fisheries biology and aquatic ecosystems finds a lot of scientific validity in the "slow and lazy" lure approach. "Bass anglers know that the bass are sluggish because of the cold water," Wencek says, "but we also have to take into account that just about everything in their environment is equally affected by the low water temperature. It's kind of like the whole aquatic environment is running in slow motion. Cold blooded creatures expend minimal energy when their body temperature is low. Since the things a bass eats are mostly cold blooded, the bass expects them to be just as sluggish as it is. If your lure doesn't fit in with that behavior profile, it looks out of place and unnatural."
Wencek related a long ago tournament experience that helped him make the connection between the scientific recognition of what the underwater world is like in winter, and the tactics he needed to use to capitalize on it. "It was cold, windy and raining ... the kind of a day that you wouldn't be fishing if it wasn't a tournament," Wencek said. "We had some bass located in 20 to 30 feet of water off the end of a long point, but they were really inactive, and the few bites we were getting were light pecks. Almost like bluegills tugging at the tails of the 4" worms and plastic grubs we were using. I decided to take advantage of a break in the rain to have a cup of coffee and a sandwich, but I made a cast with a 1/16 ounce jig and 4" worm before setting the rod down. Ten minutes later, when I picked the rod up again, something felt funny. I set the hook and put a 3 pounder in the boat.
"Both my partner and I started deadsticking our lures. Just casting to the area, letting the light jig/worm sink to the fish and leaving it alone. After three or four minutes, we'd tighten up the line and feel it. If it felt spongy, it was a fish. After catching one fish all morning, we spent the rest of the day in that spot, and caught fish all afternoon, eventually culling out the 1st and 2nd place catches. Third place wasn't even close."
Herb Reed, the man who gave the bass fishing world Slug-Go, credits the success of his soft plastic creations with his status as a student of bass behavior. "The most popular cold water baits," according to Reed, "are jigs, dressed with pork or short, fat plastic trailers and jig & grub combos. I've caught plenty of fall and winter bass on jigs over the years, and when I'm lunker hunting, it's my first choice. But after watching the way bass and baitfish act in cold water, I've added a gentle, gliding and dragging approach with a light weight rig to my winter arsenal. For the past few years, my number one cold water technique has been fishing a small split shot rig. I rig up 8 pound line with the shot only 8 inches to a foot up from the hook, and a 3" Slug-Go, 4" Fin-S Fish, or a similar gliding, straight bodied bait, as opposed to a wiggling bodied bait. The baitfish imitating color patterns like Alewife and Arkansas Shiner aren't traditionally thought of as prime late season color choices, but they really seem to get the most attention with this technique.
"The key is fishing it like it's half dead. Let it settle to the bottom, drag it a foot or two, then let it rest for a while. Don't twitch it or lift it far, and put lots of long pauses into the retrieve. And don't just fish the obvious structure. Work the bait all the way back to the boat. When the fish gang up in cold water, they'll occupy the whole area, rather than just the classic looking spots."
If you're getting the feeling that these successful winter bass experts go for a slow and gentle approach in cold water, you're on your way to increasing your wintertime bass catches. Of course there are times that too slow just wastes time. But those times don't seem to be as frequent as the times that there's no such thing as fishing too slowly.
Frequent northeast division competitor Joe Canale, changes gears as he changes lures. "When I'm fishing a jig & pig, I don't really fish it all that slowly," Canale says. "I'll use a heavier jig to be able to move it a little faster and still feel the bottom. Fish that will hit a big bait in the winter don't seem as concerned with how fast it's moving. I guess they're the most active individuals. Some days, when the overall activity level is up, you can fish that way all day and catch a pile of fish. But when things return to normal; That's when you need to down-size, lighten-up and slow-down. A lot of anglers get the first two parts of the formula all right, trying a small grub on a light jighead, or a little pork frog on a light weight hair jig. But hardly anybody fishes slowly enough.
"We call it 'diddling' a bait. You cast a 1/8 or 1/16 ounce jig & grub combo, let it sink, and every now and then, you just shake the line a few inches without ever tightening it up. When too much slack develops, you wind up most of it, and keep using the same retrieve, just kind of intermittently nudging the lure along the bottom. You feel hits by keeping a finger in contact with the line. An average cast might take two or three minutes to work through the fish zone ... sometimes longer.
"Fishing this way, you get stuck a lot, but that's the price you pay. Unless the cover is really light, it's important to use a jig head with some type of snag guard, because the whole key to catching fish is getting your lure into places that it might not come out of, and keeping it there. If you're not getting hung pretty regularly, the odds are you're not fishing the grub slowly enough."
The key to consistently triggering a response from sluggish, wintertime bass — at last according to the experts we talked to and my own experience — is a thorough, slow motion presentation. Of course you've got to be putting the lure where the fish are, but once it's there, try to make it look and act as sluggish as the bass themselves.
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