Bass target dying shad in the winter. Falling water temperatures begin to take its toll on the weaker shad leaving bass with a smorgasbord. A great bait for mimicking dying shad is a jerkbait. You can locate the depth of the shad with your electronics, so you know how deep to fish your bait. Working a jerkbait over baitfish will attract hungry bass. Baitfish will form into a defensive ball and move away from danger. This leaves your jerkbait all alone emulating a struggling shad that can’t stay with the ball. When this happens the predators that follow will race to be the first to grab it. This is why, even in cold-water when bass are sluggish, strikes can be violent. Try different cadences with your jerkbait presentation to find just what the bass are keying on. If the competition is fierce about any cadence will do.
Another great cold-water option that many anglers may not consider is to fish the jerkbait as a topwater bait. Twitching a floating style jerkbait, like the Smithwick Floating Rattlin’ Rogue, can be deadly on wintertime bass especially where the water is clear. Bass will come up from 20 feet in clear water to smash a twitching Rogue. This technique works especially well on deep clear lakes where smallmouths reside. Smallmouth bass are a bit more energetic in cold water than their largemouth cousins. When this bite is happening, the strikes can be explosive.
The lipless crankbait is my favorite all-around cold-water bass baits. There are several ways to fish this bait from ripping it through the grass to stroking it on the flats. A great lipless crankbait for winter bass is the Cotton Cordell Super Spot. This bait is heavy enough to cast a mile, but subtle enough to work slowly through the water column generating that slow action and a sound that triggers reaction strikes in cold water. These reaction strikes oftentimes result in barely hooking the bass. You will sometimes hook the bass on the outside of the mouth where it swiped at the bait from reactionary instincts. Many times, without the right set-up, you will rip the hooks free of the bass without ever knowing you had a bite. The best set-up for your lipless crankbait presentation is a slow retrieve using monofilament and a medium fast rod. The monofilament stretches and along with the fast action medium power rod this will help to increase your hook-up ratio and ultimately the number of bass that make it in the boat.
The bladed bait is a simple bait with features that may not attract anglers in the bait store, but the subtle looks and action of these baits are deadly on cold-water bass. These little baits are very versatile. Whether you have located bass in deep water and need to jig it like a spoon through suspended fish or found them up shallow where the best presentation is the pump action, the bladed bait works great. For the pump action technique slowly raise the bladed bait off the bottom. Allow it to wiggle back to the bottom on a slack line. This is done on light line and with the treble hook on the bait it does take some practice to keep from hanging up. The Cotton Cordell Gay Blade helps to avoid hang-ups by removing one of the hooks on the front treble. The front of the bait is weighted and contacts the bottom first, leaving the front of the bait clean for less hang-ups. Give it a try this winter.
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