Winter Bass
Stifle the Action for Ice Colds
 You
may need to fish different locations to find the
winter spots for the early winter time of year in the waters you
frequent. I cannot help you there, but I can teach you how to
tune up your tools and tactics (i.e., your jig and how you use
it) for cold weather. That's right - those same jigs you were
scoring with all year will work all winter long as well...that
plus a few models of soft plastics. In addition to jigs, you
should try soft plastics such as straight-tailed worms and tube
baits.
The more Yankees around, the more
consistently will the tips in this article apply, but the tips
here can also be adapted for milder winter climates down South
and out West.
Colors. I have fished many bass in
many places for many years...and use of chartreuse soft plastics
become a universal tool from about late fall through early
spring. Plus BLACK or BLACK W/CHARTREUSE TAIL TIP. Black catches
bass everywhere all the time. So that's about color in cold water
- just for starters - after that you are on your own with color
selections.
Action. I also discovered many
years ago that fish at the extreme cold edges of their feeding
range refused to take squiggly or vibrating baits such as curly
tails or plastic-lipped crankbaits for example. Quite the
contrary, these cold fish seemed to only hit perfectly
straight-bodied, small, compact baits that had absolutely no
built-in movement and that did nothing in the water, except
suspend and not move. That's why I said to toss a few straight
worms and tubes into your jig bag too. Fish these soft plastics
on jig heads - they will act more sedentary on jig heads rather
than if you rig them Texas, Carolina or splitshot.
Getting back to the jig 'n pig. I
like to use a double tail twister grub as the trailer instead of
pork or plastic frog chunks. In cold water I have noticed the
active movement of the twister legs on a lure such as a twintail
twister grub may discourage some lethargic bass from attempting
to pursue the lure. It gives the illusion that the bait is too
agile and discourages the bass from pursuing it. In these cases,
trim back the curved sickle-shaped tips of the lure legs to
produce only a very subtle flapping action. Better to trim little
by little instead of too much. In a certain sense, you are
converting the twister tail to behave more like a plastic chunk.
Now let's hold that thought for a moment...let's jump into an
age-old "rule" of jig 'n pig trailers as follows...
The age-old rule of jig n' pig
trailers is to use pork chunks in cold water and use plastic
chunks in hot water. Have you ever heard this? I am sure you must
recall it! Why does this rule exist? Well, people claim that
plastic stiffens up and acts as lively as, well, plastic in cold
water whereas pork remains supple. Personally, I am not too sure
what they are talking about nor do I care! Because when I trim
down the doubletail twister trailer, I can get any gradient of
action I want from "double twisty" (uncut) to perfectly
flat/straight (fully-trimmed). However, the best cold water
action is somewhere in between - and only gotten by careful
trimming that will still leave some stifled flappin' action. If
you look at the tails and try to envision different ways to trim
their action, you will quickly realize that there are an infinite
number of angles - the way you trim is only limited by your
imagination!
 The double tail twister grub
is a great tool in that respect - it's like having a few
different action trailers in one! Okay, not giving you a
commercial here, but heck, when I open my bag to put trailers on
- all's I see in there are Gary Yamamoto double tail grubs in
4", 5", 6" sizes. If I knew of something better,
those Yamas would be out of my bass bag and into my trash bag.
But I don't know of anything better!
I trim not only the curved tails in
cold water, but I also have flexibility to pinch the body shorter
too. What I mean is, I can use the 4" BODY unpinched to get
a thin 4" trailer - or I can pinch the tip off the 5"
BODY to get a wider 4" trailer - or pinch even more off the
6" to get a bulky 4" "pig". THEN I trim down
the twister TAILS to get more or less action out of them, okay?
Muting down the action is true of
other lures as well when it comes to iced-down bass, You want
lures that really have no visible "agility" during
extreme cold. Bass won't even bother if the lure looks too agile.
Mostly they want deadsticked stuff with no fast-moving parts on 'em
at all. Not only fast-moving parts, but I have an uneasy feeling
they may not want to see too many parts - moving or not. For
example, if you think of another trailer type such as a plastic
craw trailer. Does it have antennae, big claws, any little craw
legs sticking off it? If so, that's too many parts for me in
winter.
What's not got a lot of parts? If
you merely suspend or slowly glide a lightly-weighted tube jig in
front of icy cold fish, then that motionless tube will probably
take many more frozen bass as opposed to something active such as
a single tail twister grub that's moving fast enough to make that
tail paddle back and forth. The tube's tail will have just enough
action - the slightest bit - just like the trimmed down double
tail trailer gets to a little flappy point where it is just right
also.
Now go out there and get some ice colds, bud! |
