Entry 134-5
Denny Brauer’s Five Best Winter Patterns
Why I Depend on My Depth Finder for the Best Winter Months' 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: The winter months are the times that I depend most on my electronics. I use my Humminbird depth finder to fish deeper in the winter than I do in the summer months. I use both flashers and graphs. Don't forget that the flashers that we're using now are much more sensitive and provide much more information than the old time flashers did.
I keep a flasher and an LCR in the front of my boat and on the dash. Then, if I ever knock the transducer off my trolling motor or have one of my depth finders go out, I have a backup both on the front and the back of the boat. I actually prefer liquid crystal graphs to the flasher. However, if my graph goes out, I still have an extreme amount of confidence in my flasher. You have to remember I learned how to use a flasher for fishing long before I learned how to use the graph. I believe that the liquid crystal graphs are much easier and 
simpler for most fishermen to use than the flasher. You can identify much better what you're seeing on a graph than you can on a flasher.
I use the depth finders to fish deep brush and deep boat houses. Even when bass are suspended, they'll be suspended over, near or under some type of cover or structure. If you're going to see those bass and have a chance to catch them, you'll have to have a good working knowledge of the depth finder. The way the bass are positioned in relationship to the cover or structure will also give you some idea of what types of lures to use and what type of presentation to make. If you're going to catch bass in the winter months, learn all you can about a depth finder to find and take more bass.
