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Winter 2023
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winter. They tend to stay at their favorite rockpile or other structure, and don’t move around a lot.
One key to catching these bass is to find where they reside. Bring your lure to them and serve it on their dinner plate. They are less likely to chase their meal in the winter, so delivery is critical.
Modern electronics greatly aid in finding these deep winter bass. Learning to use sonar (conventional and live) and underwater cameras (see my related article in this issue) help solve the finding part.
WAS THAT A BITE?
The real challenge relates back to the biology lesson. The hardest part of winter fishing in deep water isn’t your personal comfort, but rather in your ability to detect the bite once you find the bass. In the summer, a bass will come from a distance to chase down and strike your bait.
Bite detection is easy when you are freight-trained.
The roles are reversed in the cold of winter. We now must chase down the bass which are largely stationary due to their slow metabolism and need to conserve energy. The epiphany that determines success in the winter is your ability feel when a bass has engulfed your lure.
If you have slack in your fishing line, you will not detect a deep winter bass bite.
STRAIGHT LINING
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Picture one point as your rod tip, and the other point as your lure. The shorter the distance between your rod tip and your lure the better your chance of feeling a bite.
Imagine the path a cylinder-style dropshot weight makes as it is dropping through forty-feet of water. As it snakes and flutters to the bottom, your fishing line follows the same path. If you could see your fishing line through the water, you would see how it snaked to the bottom. As your lure lands the bass opens its mouth and sips it in. But you never feel it because your line has slack in it.
Now imagine the path your line takes when you make a forty-foot cast and then your lure sinks to the bottom in deep water. The key to feeling winter bites is to keep your line as straight as possible.
I designed the QuickDrops dropshot weight with this
detail in mind. The teardrop shape is computer designed
to be hydrodynamically perfect. It sinks perfectly
straight down; no bobbing or weaving to put slack
in your line that results in missed bites. Details are
important.
BACK IN THE DAY
When I first learned to fish deep in California, we
didn’t have anchor or spot lock
on our trolling motors. With
any breeze at all by the time
your lure reached bottom in
fifty-feet of water, your boat
had moved, and you no longer
had a straight line. We would
minimize this problem by
taking several actions.
First, we would use a
heavier weight or lure than we
would prefer, but the faster
the lure hit bottom the less
chance for boat movement.
Secondly and more
importantly, we would hold our
rod tip perfectly still just an
inch above the water surface
before pressing the free spool
button. We would let the lure
take line off the spool until
the moment it hit bottom, and
then instantly stopped the
spool from spinning. Then we
would lift the rod tip to remove
any small amount of slack,
and once the line was tight, we
would lift the lure just off the
bottom to feel if a bass had
it clamped in their mouth. It