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
