Entry 134-4
Denny Brauer’s Five Best Winter Patterns
The Importance of the Crankbait and the Depth Finder for Successful Wintertime Bass Fishing
Editor's Note: Denny Brauer of Camdenton, Missouri, who's won just about every bass-fishing title there is, fishes in all kinds of weather and under many varied water conditions. This week he'll tell you how to catch bass in the winter.
Brauer: As I mentioned earlier in the week, most people don't think you can catch bass on crankbait in winter months. However, if the bass are hitting a slow-rolling spinner bait, they'll also hit a shad-colored crankbait or a crawdad-colored crankbait when you're fishing chunk rock. Besides my favorite bait, the jig, and the spinner bait, the crankbait and the jerkbait, my depth finder is one tool I have to have with me. I use my depth finder to look for large pods of shad out in open water. I'm not really looking for bass with my depth finder. Instead I'm just searching for those big schools of shad. If I'm going down a bank, and I don't see any schools of shad holding on that bank, I probably won't even fish that bank. For successful wintertime bass fishing, an angler needs to stay on top of the bass's food source. In most lakes throughout the nation, shad are the bass's primary food source.
For example, I've found good schools of shad way out in the lake on lakes like Table Rock. On long, flat-point gravel bars where the point drops off into the main river channel, you may be 1/2-mile from the bank and find these big pods of shad, which may be 50-feet deep. The bass may be above the pod, under the pod or beside the pod. One of the best ways to catch this kind of bass when you see them suspended this way is to use light line and a tube bait. When I'm fishing a tube down through a deep school of shad, I'll be using either 6- or 8-pound-test line. Many times, with good electronics, you'll actually be able to see the bass take the tube. I don't give the tube very much action and just use my trolling motor to ever so lightly move the tube around.
One big mistake that some fishermen make when they spot balls of shad on their depth finders but don't see bass or other gamefish around that ball of shad is they don't fish down through the shad. But I've learned that many times bass will be holding inside the school of shad. I think often that the shad know when a bass isn't hungry, so they're not frightened by having the bass in their school. However, when they detect that the bass are hungry, the school of shad often will break up.
I always try to keep my tube above the bass. In the winter months a bass will come up to take a bait, but they usually won't chase a bait that's below them. This one tactic is a very-rewarding way to catch bass when you can't catch a bass using any other strategy. I've used this technique to even catch bass down 65 feet, and most bass anglers won't even look for bass that deep. I'm not comfortable fishing that deep, and neither are most of the people I know. But if the bass are that deep, and I learn that information, I'll go get them. I think I've gotten a little better at figuring out how to catch bass shallow so that I'm not forced to fish this deep very often.
