A One Stop Fishing Magazine - Bass Fishing: Deepwater Winter Tactics

A One Stop Fishing Magazine - Bass Fishing: Deepwater Winter TacticsWintertime Bass fishing tactics for deepwater structure; with or without a boat!

A One Stop Fishing Magazine - Bass Fishing in the Slot

A One Stop Fishing Magazine - Bass Fishing in the SlotThis time of year in Southwestern Florida, area ponds are bumping up and down in temperature ranges by as much as five degrees (in what's called by scientists as Diurnal Range). This temperature differential makes for some hard angling, but if you use the right baits, you can have days where you hook up almost every cast, if you fish "in the slot". "The slot" in this case isn't the legal size of the fish, but is the time slot where fish usually eat.

Wintertime Largemouth Florida Bass Tips

Wintertime Largemouth Florida Bass Tips

By The Mentoring Angler, Gary Anderson

Some of the toughest fishing you will ever find is in catching Florida Bass in the Winter. Largemouth bass become lethargic in cold water, as do many other freshwater fishes, seeking the shelter and warmth of the deep. Eating habits are true year round in that large bass eat generally in a 48 hour cycle, with the exception of wintertime where at the peak of this 48 hour window, they generally feed only an hour or two. Compared to the summer, where they may feed all day upon the opening of this window. Moving from pads near the center or floating grassmatts in a lake, stream or canal, bass in the winter tend to move into the covers of deep stumps, underwater trees and rocky outcrops, only coming into the warming shallow waters of the late afternoons to search for prey. The best tips in catching Florida Winter bass are:

• Bass frequent underwater structure deeper in the wintertime
• Fish the shallows only late in the afternoons
• When retrieving any hardware, a slower than normal presentation is required
• Subtle jerks are used in plastics, looking for slight twitches in the line to alert a bite
• Angling just before a low-pressure (Cold front) produces the best bites
• If on the water, the bite is slow to no, come back the next day in finding that window
• Find that window of opportunity, mark it on a calendar and fish it all wintertime

READ THE REST OF THE STORY/w pics too!

BASS REPORT 3/29/2011 North Port/Mayakka/Canals

Bass fishing has been like riding a roller coaster this last week, before the rains, one day you beat your rod across the grass and the next you kick butt. The weather and river level has been has been as changeable as the fish bite. Then, we received 3.7 inches of rain yesterday and where there once were Lilly pads, is now just open water with pad structure underneath. We started the week working the scenic Myakka river and then into the various tributaries and swamp inlets, which became accessible after the down pours. Tilapia are on their beds and will furiously attack anything that crosses them, making for some great snag hook ups on light to medium tackle. The fight quite good and size wise is great too! The bass to are fending their beds along the banks as the females can be found along side the tilapia beds, feeding on their eggs. This suggests, at least along the mid-Myakka and up into the North Port canals, their spawn is winding down. Most of our bass were caught on jerk baits but after cleaning a couple of the smaller ones for a baked bass dinner, we found their stomachs filled with crayfish; guess what I'll be using this week out of my tackle box?

Our most productive lures were Junebug Spinners with #1 long shank eagle-claw hooks, X-Rap® Shad Shallow SureSet® , 4” Zoom lizards in green with blue specks and frogs. I was using medium-action Carrot stik Rod, Pflueger reel and Suffix, eight-pound test Deep Crankin’ mono-filament. Ed was going light with a short Ugly Stik attached light Pflueger reel with Cajan 6 pound test. 

 

Up around the I75 bridge, before the rain, holds nice bass staging as they were moving into a pre-spawn habitat, in nesting. Heavy rains I am almost sure put an end to that as the river is up quite a bit.

Warming water and strong winds with high barometer made for a tough week although some impressive bass have been caught by anglers pulling X-Rap's® over new grass growth or by casting floating frogs to wood cover. The deep-drop banks and the bends along the canals or openings to new canals at North Port/Murdock are hold staging bass and all outlets from draining pipes are worth some time.

Bass Attack

Myakka Bass Attack

Edwin & Gary Anderson canoeing the backwaters of the Scenic Florida Myakka River

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Florida Sinkhole Bass

Florida Sinkhole Bass

With the lack of spring to summer rains here in south Florida, winter water levels are a bit down, causing foliage and such as aquatic vegetation to also be sparse in places with only large patches of cat-tails or Pussy-willows to make the breaks of your drop-off lines along Florida natural sinkholes. Sinkholes too are areas if which many a gravel to coral-rock quarry are often started in Florida, as this material is sought after in roadways to highways, along with landscaping needs found at various nursery's. To either end, Florida sinkholes offer a natural flow of clean, cold, clear water, in which Florida Largemouth bass and a variety of Pan fishes can grow to enormous sizes. My son, Edwin and I spend much time on Google maps in search of gravel pits to natural sinkholes to explore and fish. As of late, Edwin found a hum-dingier too which we have been mapping out for the last couple of days. Gin clear waters where one would swear it was but only two or three feet deep, only to drop the anchor in measuring and find it actually sixteen feet deep. Other places, our twenty-five foot anchor line hung straight down, never touching the bottom but you could see fish swimming along the bottom ; now that is some crystal clear water and deep too. Out of three days, mapping out the structure of this pond, it is ¼ of a mile long and 500 feet across, at its widest gap. Having crystal clear waters too, creates problems in presentations of ones lures and ones self too. You can see the fish, so in contrast, he can see you. Though more often than not, the bass and Pan fish alike seemed curious as they would approach our canoe, look and swim away, ignoring all that was presented to them but once we found the answer to this problem, it was a hot bass bite on a cold water winter day.

 Bass 10 feet down!