Fishing Cold Fronts

[Chance_Taker4]

I have a tournament on Sunday and the water I am fishing is under a pretty big cold front. The temps dropped to highs in the 90s to barley making it into the 60s. This has lasted about 2 weeks and still no sign of a warm up yet. Water temps have fallen from 80 to 74 degrees. The primary target is Smallmouth (though when I prefished I got on some nice largies). Am I better off going deep with finesse or still hit the docks and lay downs?

[Sword of the Lord]

I'm not an expert, but from what I gather, the warmer it is, the deeper they are to stay cool, right? So if it's cooler, you'll find them shallower? 

[Cranks4fun]

Big cold fronts followed by strong high pressure are one of the most difficult challenges to bass fisherman, as we all probably know. I am no expert on cold-front fishing, but based on lots of reading, fishing slower and REAL CLOSE to heavy cover. In high pressure situations in winter and early spring, you just about have to drag the bait across their lips sometimes. I fished with a guy in VA who used to use weightless ribbontail Zoom worms (pumpkin/chartreuse). He would cast to cover and let it sink and just sit for about 30-45 seconds (painfully LONG!). Then he would twitch it or drag it about 3 inches every 5 seconds or so. He caught bass that way but he deep hooked a lot (even killed some). I use drop shot after a cold front and lots of guys use shaky head worms moved very slowly. Good luck!

[scaleface]

  The drop in temps might turn them on .   Me . I dont go finesse because of a cold front  , I will try what has been working and adapt from there . Deep fish might be unaffected , shallow fish might be tighter to cover . Theres a    cold spell going on here too and I expect the bite to pick up . 

[Cgolf]

I see these conditions a lot in N. WI and find the fish get tighter to cover and sometimes have to cast out plastics to cover, let them sit, hope a fish is there, reel in and recast. I have found lipless baits work, letting them drop before reeling in even shallow. 

 

I wonder though, since it has been two weeks in the making, I am guessing the fish are rolling with it, especially since the temps have seemed to fluctuate so much this year, at least in WI. So they may no longer see this as a cold front. 

[NHBull]

I find that change to be favorable but that is unlikely to change the thermocline much.

I would fish it as you would normally thinking suspended fish might be a couple feet higher.

I don't thing that changes how fish related to docks.

It might also make the fish a little more active as the bait fish will be higher in the water column.

 

We are in the same situation and Texas and wacky have been crushing it, with the larger ones crushing CB.  Our larger ones are on dock, grass and timber on flats.

[Chance_Taker4]

2 hours ago, cgolf said:

I see these conditions a lot in N. WI and find the fish get tighter to cover and sometimes have to cast out plastics to cover, let them sit, hope a fish is there, reel in and recast. I have found lipless baits work, letting them drop before reeling in even shallow. 

 

I wonder though, since it has been two weeks in the making, I am guessing the fish are rolling with it, especially since the temps have seemed to fluctuate so much this year, at least in WI. So they may no longer see this as a cold front. 

I was wondering the same thing. This front had been here awhile and there's no end in sight yet. I was wondering if this would make them think it's fall and trigger more aggressive bites. I know in the spring it warmed up 20 degrees warmer than average and put the Walleye spawn a month earlier than normal because they got confused.

[Cgolf]

1 hour ago, Chance_Taker4 said:

I was wondering the same thing. This front had been here awhile and there's no end in sight yet. I was wondering if this would make them think it's fall and trigger more aggressive bites. I know in the spring it warmed up 20 degrees warmer than average and put the Walleye spawn a month earlier than normal because they got confused.

 

Forgot one bait that saved my bacon one cold drizzly morning, the Spybait. I fished it in 6 fow around reeds and the fish really jumped on the bait. I caught 7 on it in 30 minutes after boating only 1 fish in 2 hours. 

[Chance_Taker4]

Ok I had my event yesterday and well I didn't weigh in a fish. But the entire field had a tough day with only one limit weighed in. However I did catch a lot of non keeper small mouth and the highlight of the day was a limit of walleye (one being 23") and 9 Yellow Perch (Two being 15"). Almost all bites from my dinks and the ones weighed in came from deep cranking rock pilings and drop shots. The docks and lay downs were dead.