Bass Fishing Bait: Cold Water Lures

As the seasons move from winter through spring toward summer special techniques are needed if your early season fishing efforts are to be rewarded.  Hopefully the following information will be of benefit in your early season efforts.

Bass are cold-blooded.This means that the temperature of their body is the same as the surrounding water. The metabolism of the bass slows as its body temerature drops. This decrease in metabolism means that the digestion of the fish also is slowed in colder temperatures. It is reported that a meal which will be digested in four hours when the water temperature is 80 degrees will take four days to be digested when the water temperature is only 50 degrees. This decrease in metabolism and digestion results in a decrease in the need for frequent feeding which means the bass will not be as active in colder water temperatures.

Because bass are less active in colder water temperatures, the choice of lures used becomes very important if you are going to be successful in catching bass when the temperature drops.

Following cold water lure suggestions are taken from an article written by Don Wirth* titled “Cold Water Bass Lures”

Suspending Jerkbait
Seasoned bass pros like Larry Nixon swear by these minnow mimics in water as cold as 40 degrees. They work best in clear to moderately stained lakes.”Suspending jerkbaits, unlike most other bass lures, draw strikes when they’re sitting still,” Nixon told BASS PRO ONLINE. “In fact, that’s when most of your hits will come on this bait — when it’s hanging absolutely motionless in the water column.”

Jig ‘n Pig
When the lake is cold and stained-to-muddy, nothing works harder to connect you with a lunker bass than a jig ‘n pig. This reliable bass bait has accounted for many monster largemouths in winter and early spring.

Bass pro Ron Shuffield is an admitted jig junkie. “When the water is below 50 degrees, I feel more confident fishing a jig ‘n pig than any other lure,” he testified. “When rigged with a split-tail pork frog, it’s a near-perfect crawfish mimic. The heavy jighead bumps through submerged brushpiles and over logs with ease, and the jig’s rubber skirt and tails of the trailer flare out like the arms and pinchers of a live craw. This is the ultimate cold-water big-bass lure. I caught a 10 1/2-pounder on a jig ‘n pig at an Arkansas lake last January.”

Shuffield targets submerged wood cover lining reservoir creek channels and ditches in the dead of winter. “This pattern holds true everywhere I’ve fished for bass. Just run up a tributary arm and work your way back out following the old creek channel, pitching a jig ‘n pig to every stump, log and stickup you encounter. If you can find an underwater ditch, even better, because these subtle structures receive very little fishing pressure and can hold monster bass.

Ron fishes the jig ‘n pig on a 7-foot heavy-action baitcasting rod or flipping stick with 20 pound mono: “Jig fishing is not an ultralight game; you’ve got to hammer the fish and winch it out of thick cover.”

Shuffield’s bonus tip:“When fishing a jig ‘n pig in a laydown tree, you’ll hang up less often by swimming the lure horizontally through the branches rather than letting it fall vertically through them. Hold your rod at 10 o’clock and reel steadily, speeding up slightly if you feel the jig drag the tree. A swimming jig looks just like a moving crawfish.”

Strike King Kevin VanDam Heavy Cover Swim Jigs

This post has only touched the surface of the vast amount of information available to improve your bass fishing. The Complete Bass Fishing Course shares the bassfishing knowledge of the legendary Bill Dance on 12 DVDs along with 12 CDs. Click below to learn how to receive a free lesson DVD.