| Winter Jerk-Bait Fishing | |
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by Phil Williams
Mid-America Bass
Now to the tricky part. How do you find these winter fish when the water is so cold and the fish are so lethargic? Well, if you don't have years of experience at winter fishing to fall back on the easiest way to find them is to forget about those hard to catch, lethargic fish and concentrate on the more active fish. The easiest way to do that is to find the schools of dying shad. Not just any shad, dying shad. When the lake gets really cold the shad die off by the thousands and these are the ones the big fish are looking for. They have to exert little effort to eat these shad and when you find one you usually find a bunch. All they have to do is suspend near the school and wait for dinner to flutter by.
Sometimes you can see the shad floating but most of the time you'll just see them flutter near the surface then head back down in the water. The best way I've found is to watch the Bald Eagles that have come down from Canada for one reason, to eat dying shad. They are all over the banks of the Mississippi River and other bodies of water in Missouri all winter long and they feed on these same shad until they head back north in the spring. They are almost fool proof. When you see one perched and then swoop down for a shad, you've most likely found winter bass. They make their living finding these large schools of dying shad and so do those big winter bass.
Gulls can help you find dying shad as well but you must observe the posture they're in order for them to be a really big help. They fly around, looking for shad, many times out in the middle of the lake whereas the Eagle hunts much closer to the shoreline he is perched on and the fish here are much easier to catch. However if you see gulls diving near the shore and coming up with shad this can be a very good spot. If you find these dying shad in the backs of small coves that's where you'll find the catchable bass. You may have to fish 7 or 8 of these spots to get a limit but you'll have a good one.
Head out in the morning knowing that you're fishing for 5 or 6 bites and that these bites will be good enough that if you execute you'll have a very good chance of winning. After a few years of finding these fish you'll have the knowledge of the types of areas to find these schools of shad and then the birds will be a bonus. Don't get caught up in all the things you're likely to read about where to catch winter bass either. You don't have to fish main lake points and you don't have to fish deep and the wind does not push schools of shad.
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