TAKEOFF
SCENARIOS
3 WAYS TO WHACK ’EM IN WINTER
W
HOW TO TACKLE SOME OF THE SEASON’S TOUGHEST FISHING CONDITIONS
inter bass fishing presents challenges and rewards
in equal measure. While finding fish and getting
bites in the winter months can be downright gruel-
ing, the scarcity of bites is perhaps outweighed by the quality
of bass you might encounter.
Simply put: If you spend enough time fishing in the winter,
you’re going to catch big fish.
But finding fish is enough of a challenge to scare many
anglers away from the water during the coldest months of
the year, when fish are sometimes lethargic, lying low and
conserving energy in anticipation for warmer weather and
new opportunities to feed and reproduce.
Thankfully, FLW Tour pros Bryan Thrift, Todd Castledine
and Greg Bohannan know more than a thing or two about
how to find and catch bass during the coldest months of
the year.
Scenario 1
Where: Lake Norman (North Carolina)
Details: January, with post-warm front
conditions, sunny and calm
By Justin Onslow
“Once those fish get into a winter pattern, if you have two
or three days of warm weather, that really doesn’t affect
them until you get into a prespawn stage,” Thrift says. “I’m
going to start out with a jerkbait and a crankbait and things
like that – something that I can use to effectively fish for sus-
pended fish and fish on the bottom and try to cover water
with – and then go to a jig and things like that when the sun
gets high.”
Thrift targets rocks and docks on Lake Norman, usually in
6 to 8 feet of water. When the sun is high, those structures
retain more heat than their surroundings and often attract
fish. The key to targeting those structures, though, is to know
when to slow down and fish more finesse presentations.
“When you get a high bluebird sky in the winter with no
wind, you really have to slow down and drag a jig slow or
throw a shaky head or some kind of finesse presentation to
get them to bite,” Thrift says.
Scenario 2
Where: Sam Rayburn Reservoir (Texas)
Details: January, with steady, moderate
temperatures, sunny and calm
Remove the cold front from the equation and January fish-
ing on Rayburn can mean tremendous opportunities, accord-
ing to Texas native Todd Castledine.
“I want it sunny,” he says. “The sun will usually give a bigger
window of them biting. If they haven’t bit all morning long and
26
Two-time FLW Tour Angler of the Year Bryan Thrift is a firm
believer that warm and cold fronts do little to affect where
fish are positioned during the winter months. He does, how-
ever, posit that how fish bite during those periods is vastly dif-
ferent based on various conditions.
FLWFISHING.COM I WINTER 2019