Winter Fishing: Top 5 baits for Cold Water Bass

With winter fast approaching most lakes have turned over and the bass have headed for warmer deep water haunts. "Deep" is a relative term that varies lake to lake but when bass head for the depths a lot of anglers lose confidence.

In this week's video we break down our favorite baits for seeking out those deep water bass. This list may be missing some baits you expect but when the going gets tough, these 5 options are consistent producers.

1) A Football Jig: Tim and I vary a little on our specific choices. I lean toward a 1/2 oz or heavier Dirty Jigs Finesse Football (Give "Go To" or "Super Matt Brown" those colors are deadly). Tim takes it a step further and will occasionally go as light as 3/8 oz with his Dirty Jigs HP Football Jig. Why go with a light weight in deep water, you ask? With the lighter weight comes a smaller hook, allowing you to drop to lighter line and even throw the jig on a spinning rod if conditions require.

2) A Drop Shot: Tried and true, this bait is deadly in deep water! Tim likes to downsize, often using a size 2 Owner Mosquito hook with a small tungsten weight. He insists that the light hook allows his bait to have maximum action in deep water. As for baits, he uses a wide range of options but a 6" Roboworm Margarita Mutilator is a proven winter time color.

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3) Ball Head: The ball head is such a simplistic way to fish and consistently catches quality fish in the cold water months. Much like a darthead, you should thread the worm on so the point of the hook is left exposed. The difference between a ball head and virtually every other head design is that it has almost no action of its own. This is a drawback most of the year but when the water is cold that "dead action" drives the fish crazy. Tim and I both agree, a 5" senko is your best option with this presentation. Day in and day out, it gets a significantly larger bite than smaller worms.

4) A Jigging Spoon: The spoon is a deadly bait throughout the fall but don't lose faith as cooler temps take over and the bass become lethargic. Using a very subtle flip-flop approach, keeping the jig on bottom at all times, is a phenomenal way to get a big bite in winter. Matt prefers the Blade Runner DUH spoon for its ideal weight, size, and color schemes.

5) The Small Swimbait: I prefer the 6" Basstrix or the 4.8 Keitech coupled with 1/2 and 3/4 oz Swimbait Heads. With an exposed lead head its very easy to maintain bottom contact. From rock to gravel, sand to mud, you'll feel every change in contour and the bite will be unmistakable. For this method I maintain constant bottom contact and swim the bait as slowly as I can stand. It presents a sizable but slow moving meal to the bass that is hard to resist.

This Winter, consider not getting your boat winterized. Instead, head for the lake! The bass are still there and they still need to feed. You may be surprised to find that some of your biggest bites of the year come when the water temperature is below 50 degrees.

Glide Baits: How to Fish the S-Waver

The popularity of glide baits has exploded in the last 2 years! With their advent, jointed swimbaits went from a warm-water bait to a year-round bait almost overnight. Whether you choose to throw a Roman Made Negotiator, a Deps Slide Swimmer, or an S-Waver, the retrieves that consistently put fish in the boat are completely interchangeable.

After our S-Waver 200 video came out in the spring we received a lot of requests for a video explaining how to fish the bait. Unfortunately we were headed into summer and couldn't address the questions right away. With fall upon us, the glide bait season is in full swing and its time to teach you how to fish these incredibly deadly baits!

Matt and Tim have developed a unique style to fishing these baits that has allowed them to catch numerous giant limits on a variety of lakes and reservoirs. As is often the case with these two, there is great variance in the gear they choose to use. Both have fine tuned their equipment to their own style and both think the other does it wrong. Perhaps you can see through the mire and identify which style you more closely relate to.

Matt comes from a traditional swimbait background and prefers stouter equipment than Tim. Tim comes from a tournament background and prefers a more balanced, (play the fish instead of drag the fish) approach.  

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For the 8" and larger glide baits both anglers use the Dobyns 806H. While this may seem light to a swimbait angler it will be extremely heavy for a traditional tournament guy. We choose this rod because of its great balance, stout backbone, and moderate action. You can sling a giant bait but its not so stout that the fish will bend the hooks. Both anglers also agree on using 65-80 lb braided line with a 30 lb mono leader under most circumstances.

This is where the similarities stop. On occasion Tim will drop down as light as 17 lb fluorocarbon if he's fishing clear water reservoirs. Matt insists that big bass won't shy away from his 30 lb line as long as the leader is of substantial length. Reels are another point of contention between the two anglers. Matt prefers the fit and feel of a traditional round reel for big baits. He loads his rod with Shimano Calcutta in 300 and 400 sizes. Tim on the other hand prefers the relaxed fit and feel of the Abu Garcia Revo 50, insisting that the 60 is too large.

For the 6-8" Glide Baits including the S-Waver 168 the angler's unique styles show themselves again. Matt prefers a Dobyns 764C (traditionally known as a jig rod) for its stout backbone and ability to drive the hooks into the fish. He couples it with either a Lew's BB-1 Pro or Curado 200. Both reels are spooled with 50-65 lb Sufix 832 Braid affixed to a 15-20 lb mono leader.

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Tim on the other hand reaches for the Dobyns 764 CB (Soft cranking rod) for its gentle load and ability to play the fish. He couples it with the Lew's Team Gold Speed Spool filled with 30 lb braid and a 15-20 lb Sunline Flourocarbon Leader.

While the anglers can't agree on their equipment both have proven their technique is effective at landing big bass. Once you've dialed in your gear, the following retrieves will help you turn your followers into committed bites.

4 Retrieves for Glide Baits:

1. The Slow Crawl: As the name insinuates, this retrieve is as easy as it gets. Reel the baits slowly and steadily at the slowest possible speed you can before the bait loses action and starts dragging through the water.

2. The Pull and Glide: This retrieve involves a 6 slow handle turns to get the bait moving followed by a long sweep of the rod. The bait will go from a slow crawl to a fast escape attempt followed by a sweeping left or right turn and is deadly on big followers!

3. The Crawl and Twitch: using a combination of 4-12 slow handle rotations followed by two quick snaps of the rod/reel you can create the appearance of a bait that has been startled. Use this retrieve around cover or when a bass is closely stalking the bait

4. The Walk: Use a combination of the rod tip and reel handle to "walk the dog" with the bait. Fast or slow, the walk will pull incredibly vicious strikes from bass that are chasing bait, in shallow water, or are otherwise acting aggressively.

Use these 4 retrieves the next time you're on the water to turn your favorite glide bait into a fish catcher. Each retrieve has been proven to put big bass in the boat time and time again! As always, if you have questions, comments, or tips of your own, we'd love to hear them!

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Monster Double Digit Bass Destroys a Swimbait!

If I had to choose just one way to target giant bass day in and day out, it would be the swimbait. Every year a variety of techniques put big bass in the boat but the most consistent option for the giants is the large swimbait.

On this day I had the pleasure of fishing with a close friend. We had put in a few hours already, catching just a few small bass on reaction baits in shallow water around grass. We had the choice of continuing to target those smaller fish or moving out to deeper water to try and get a big bass. We made the decision to move out and target the big females that were lurking on the ledges searching for easy meals.

On this particular day I used a Huddleston Deluxe 8" ROF 12 swimbait in Rainbow trout (there are no trout present in this lake but the bass don't care) and fished it with the stock jig hook. This allows me to work the bait through rocks without getting snagged on every cast.

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On just the 3rd cast, the giant bit. It just goes to show that throwing a big swimbait doesn't mean you're going to have to throw it for hours, waiting for the bite. When big bass are feeding, big baits work. In many circumstances they work BETTER than their smaller counterparts.

This particular fish was sitting on the top of a rocky ledge that transitioned from 6 to 17 feet of water. I set the boat in the shallows and cast off the ledge into the deep water. Wanting to avoid nicking the line in the rocks, I began retrieving the swimbait before it hit the bottom. As the bait came close to the top of the ledge the bass came up out of the rocks and intercepted it, resulting in a very aggressive bite. As you can see, the rest played out very quickly.

Catching Big Bass on the S-Waver 200

Several years ago the glide bait market exploded. Almost over night it became common place to see single-jointed, hard swimbaits on the decks of virtually every boat on the West Coast. It developed in to a craze with a cult-like following of anglers that believe glide baits will help them catch the biggest bass of their life. Frankly, they may be right. 

Before the craze though, there were only a few glide baits widely available to anglers. The most common of which was the S-Waver 168 by River2Sea. When they reached out to us last year about an upcoming project for a larger 200 mm version of their already popular glide bait we were all ears. 

It was an honor to get our hands on the baits before they hit the market. As impressive as the baits themselves were, we were equally impressed when we found out the pricing. In a world of 100-500 dollar glides the S-Waver came in at $34.99! The rest as they say, is history.

This video is about CATCHING fish and showing the power of glide baits, it really isn't about HOW we go about doing those things. Expect a follow up video explaining the details of equipment, a variety of baits worth looking in to, and the retrieves that will help you put glide baits to work for you as you pursue that giant bass.