Winter Bass Will Bite In Shallow, Muddy Water

One of the great things about the South is that winterizing a bass boat is less the norm and more an outlier for anglers who like to hunt a little too much. As the waters above Kentucky start to freeze over, the waters across the Southeast settle into the lower 50s and occasionally dip into the 40s. But the opportunity to go fishing still exists. And not the ‘go sit on a bucket over a hole in the ice’ style fishing. We’re talking full fledged, smell of two stroke in the morning style fishing.

So we’re lucky in that sense. But on the flip side of the same coin, fishing during the winter months can be brutally tough. Outside of the meteorological conditions where you may have to battle rain, sleet or even snow on the rare occasion, you also have some of the toughest conditions in the water that you’ll encounter all year.

This is an example of a sweet spot the author is looking for. When you find it, spend time with the right baits on the spot.

As the water temps drop, bass become very lethargic. Bass are cold-blooded, so their body temperatures are regulated by the world around them. The colder the water, the slower their metabolism and other bodily functions operate. So the bass aren’t burning as many calories, they aren’t as active and they have spent the entire fall packing on weight by gorging on shad and other prey. This makes a bass hard to catch in general throughout the winter.

Add to that the ever changing landscape in which we chase bass in the winter, and you have a compounding effect that really does make catching a quality bass quite difficult this time of year. Many bodies of water are drawn down in the wintertime to prevent flooding caused by heavy winter rains. When those winter rains come, the lakes will often rise and fall several feet in a matter of days. And all that rain will often muddy the water up and create a lot of current as the fishery’s governing body tries to flush the excess water back out of the system.

With the fish already in a reluctant state and so many things being thrown at them at once, finding a consistent bite through the winter can be rather difficult. A pattern fishing for deep fish on a football jig for instance often gets derailed by an influx of really dirty water. Dirty water also creates issues in areas where you were previously fishing for suspended fish with a jerkbait or umbrella rig. The most consistent thing on a familiar fishery is an old honey hole or sweet spot that holds up year after year. But even those can be wrecked by rising and falling water.

So what can you do in the winter to catch bass on a consistent basis regardless of how lethargic the fish are or how brutal the varying conditions might be? For me, the answer is pretty simple. Concentrate on water that’s shallow, cold and muddy.

One consistent thing in the wintertime across almost all freshwater fisheries from Louisiana to Georgia and all the way up into Kentucky and the Carolinas, somewhere there is some shallow, cold and muddy water. The availability of a consistent set of conditions across so many fisheries is one reason I seek this particular set of conditions out. You can move from one fishery to the next and never really have to start over. Or fish the same fishery throughout the winter without having to start from scratch when a big rain comes.

In a situation where you’re fishing the same fishery throughout the winter, you may find yourself confronted with higher or lower water from trip to trip. So the place you found on the previous trip may be out of the water or too deep now, but you just have to move with the new set of conditions and look for the same thing. What is that? In the winter, I’m typically looking for an area between zero and 4 feet deep with muddy water and some form of cover present.

And, though you can catch some nice spotted bass in current this time of year across many southeastern fisheries, we’re primarily talking about targeting largemouth bass in this story, so you’ll also want the area to be out of the current. It can still have current close by, which can oftentimes be a good thing, but you want to actually be targeting the fish most of the time in slack water.

The presence of cover is critical in the wintertime when fishing shallow, cold and muddy conditions, but that’s not to say you can’t catch fish without cover. The overarching theme when fishing shallow like this in the wintertime is making the most out of your efforts. You’re constantly trying to increase the odds in your favor. Cover helps you do that.

Though I’ve caught some good fish out in the open just sunning on a hard spot on the bottom, casting randomly in search of a fish like that is extremely time consuming. I only find myself fishing those type places on fisheries that I’m very familiar with where I stumble onto a hard spot like that in 2 feet of water by chance. When fishing a body of water I’m unfamiliar with on the other hand, 95% of my efforts are aimed at cover I can see.

The reasoning behind this is fairly simple and all comes back to the lethargy of a bass in cold water. A bass doesn’t want to exert a lot of energy, so they’ll usually find a nice ambush point like a log, stump or big rock and set up shop. Now they can simply lie in wait for a passing ball of bait or crawfish likewise looking for cover. The bass is able to conserve energy and, in some cases, even absorb some radiant heat from certain cover like large, dark rocks that are heated up by the sun.

So targeting cover gives you the best chance to catch bass on average, thus stacking the numbers as in your favor as much as possible. Though, you still shouldn’t expect a lot of bites. Even in a target rich environment where all the conditions are perfect, a good area in the wintertime may only produce a handful of bites amidst dozens of targets. And that’s not a bad thing. You’ll find fishing this way, the name of the game is usually quality over quantity. And, if you find a target-rich environment like this that generates multiple bites, you can typically make several passes back through the same water and catch more fish. This repetition is key in the winter, but not only for areas.

If you find a particular piece of cover that really sets your fishy senses aflame, you should make repetitive casts to it. Say you’re fishing a pocket with several stumps, but only one log. Get your boat into position so that you can parallel the log with your bait, keeping it in the strike zone as long as possible. But don’t simply fire a cast down it and then move on empty-handed. Instead, make the same cast to the same side of the log several times.

Bass don’t usually move far or fast in cold water conditions. Oftentimes, that first cast goes by a bass just out of reach. Perhaps the bass was on the other side of the log and moves toward the disturbance in the water to investigate. If you simply make the one cast and move on, or even if you throw to the other side of the log before departing, you’ll never know the bass was in the area.

I have sat and made multiple fruitless casts to a piece of cover this time of year in 2 feet of muddy water or less on dozens of occasions, only to have the fish bite on the third, fourth or fifth casts. You have to fish cover like you know a bass is sitting there in the wintertime. It takes confidence to keep throwing at a piece of cover without a bite when you can see another dozen pieces of cover in the same area that you haven’t fished yet, but I guarantee you that if you do fish this way even for just one whole trip, you will catch a bass on a receptive cast to a piece of cover. And then you’ll have the confidence needed to do it again.

So we’ve established the when and where to look for bass in shallow, cold and muddy water, but what baits are best for this particular scenario. The common thread will be something that you can fish slow while still drawing the attention of a bass in low visibility conditions whether by sight or feel. So we’re talking baits like squarebills, vibrating jigs, spinnerbaits and flipping jigs.

My two favorites would have to be a chartreuse-and-black squarebill and a double Colorado spinnerbait with a white skirt. These two baits again maximize your chances of a fish seeing or feeling your bait. I like a ChatterBait in the wintertime for the same reasons anytime I’m targeting fish under bushes or docks and I need a bait that I can skip. But I typically lean more toward the double Colorado spinnerbait in any other situation where I might otherwise throw a ChatterBait because I can slow the spinnerbait down more.

A spinnerbait maximizes your chances of a fish seeing or feeling the bait. A double Colorado spinnerbait allows anglers to slow the bait down in areas where bass may be holding tight to cover, like they normally do during the cold months.

A spinnerbait is also slightly less sticky compared to a vibrating jig. And this is very important not only because of the repetitive casts required that we previously talked about but also the nature of fishing cover in general in the wintertime. You want to “scrape the bark off” as my dad says. Meaning, you want to get your bait as close to the cover as possible. The strike zone for a lethargic bass can be extremely small as they hold tightly to cover.

So getting your bait right up next to that cover is critical. The only problem, the closer to the cover you get and the more often your bait is there, naturally the more likely you are to get hung. Leaving you with one last adage from the old man, “If you’re not getting hung, you’re not throwing where the fish are.” So don’t get discouraged. Hanging up is bound to happen, you just want to pick baits that minimize it as much as possible.

Likewise, this is what makes a squarebill such an effective bait. Again, it moves a lot of water and the chartreuse and black back creates a lot of contrast and flash for the fish to locate visually, but a squarebills innate ability to come through cover cleanly makes it a fantastic bait for fishing shallow, cold and muddy water.

If you have a hard time fishing a squarebill through cover without snagging, that’s understandable as it can be a little tricky, especially at first. One common mistake some anglers will make is that they’ll have their rod tip pointed high as they try to pull it over cover. Interestingly, this is actually counterintuitive. A squarebill by design does a great job of walking through cover. The bait’s nose-down orientation and side-to-side wobble actually keeps the hooks tucked up and away behind the bait as it works through cover. By raising the rod tip, an angler actually pulls the lip of the bait up and the hooks down closer to the cover making it more likely to snag.

You’ll also often see anglers who are unfamiliar with this style of fishing jump the gun a bit as the bait collides against the cover. They will set the hook, mistaking the bumping of a limb for the bite of a bass. This is easy to do and I still will feel things while coming through cover that I am certain is a bite only to throw back through the same lane and feel the same thing again at which point I rule the supposed bite out.

What you don’t want to do in this situation is snatch. Most squarebills are around 2 inches long and loaded with six ultra-sharp hook points. Snatching will typically plant one of those hook points in the cover. Instead, use that wad of close quartered hooks to let the fish hook themselves as they will often do. Just keep reeling and let your rod load up when you think you have a bite. What you’ll soon discover is that fishing this way you’ll actually end up crawling your bait across the cover while waiting for the rod to load up and realize it wasn’t a bite at all without having to do the troll of shame to go dislodge your lure.

Learning to make the most out of shallow, cold and muddy water will make you a far better and more productive angler not only in the wintertime, but year-round. Slowing down and making yourself think like a bass and envision bites before they come will help you that much more when the bites aren’t so few and far between. So take these tips out on the water this winter, and see if you can’t master some of the toughest conditions of the year.