winter bank fishing

[Mike Pesenti]

fishing has been fun and its been good but temps have dropped considerably and i was wondering if you bank anglers hang up the rods for the winter or keep casting? if you keep casting what have you found successful? its been rough and i was thinking about going back to trout fishing for the season but we all know how hard laying off the bass is. i know its not supposed to be easy. that's a ,to of the reason  i like fishing for bass, maybe just need a little help...

[Bluebasser86]

If the water is soft, the fish will bite. I've had great days when half the pond was frozen over. A smaller suspending jerkbait is far and away my most productive bait. Rocky banks with deeper water nearby are always good places to look.

[schplurg]

I've only bass fished over one winter so far and never had a bite. This year I will try again, but I'm also heading for the hills to do some creek trout fishing. I'm not sure how or where but that's the plan. Probably near Yosemite for one. Also to the Delta for stripers and whatnot.

 

If I don't fish I'll lose my mind, especially with the lockdowns here and all that. I started fishing 3 years ago and it's all I want to do now.

 

Anyways, for bass I'm gonna try to find deepest waters I can reach from shore. I'm also not giving up on shallower water, not at all. What choice do we bank anglers have really? Fish will come around here and there I would guess. When they do I will be there waiting for them  

 

I just noticed you're in East Bay? If that's SF Bay then delta. Also maybe some surf fishing. Don't forget about the ocean! It's a good fishery I hear  

[Sphynx]

@Bluebasser86 is right on this one in my experience, with this caveat, you aren't going to get away with the same level of sloppiness you can get away with during the fall and spring, your going to have to be throwing the right sorts of baits into the exact right places, and you probably aren't getting away with sloppy entry as often either, you bomb a Texas rig out there like an artillery shell you'll probably have already blown a spot, spring and fall are EZ mode for bank anglers, summer and winter are not, and the success in some cases will depend on how big your water body is, if you can't reach the whole body you might have to target a much lower number of fish than other times because you just can't get to the deep fish, also remember to respect the elements, they will pooch a day of fishing really fast.

[Hewhospeaksmuchbull]

Jerkbait had me catching last winter and is producing now, as is the jig. In either case long pauses are needed to get bites. I do best casting to sun baked banks, cover and structure and working bait back.

 

Yesterday I was casting to tullies and could see the fish tucked down under them, the only fish I caught I watched follow my bait from the cover. I was pulling a jig about one to two feet at a time with pauses of anywhere from 10 to thirty seconds. It was it was on the pause and about three or four minutes into retrieve when she took my bait.

[galyonj]

10 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

If the water is soft, the fish will bite. I've had great days when half the pond was frozen over. A smaller suspending jerkbait is far and away my most productive bait. Rocky banks with deeper water nearby are always good places to look.

This mirrors my experience.

 

Naturally, my presentations change – smaller plastics, for example – and everything is worked more slowly, but that's about it.

 

In some ways winter shrinks your decision tree down. You're mostly chasing warmer water (or water that's got quick access back to deeper, more stable [in terms of temperature] water).

• As @Bluebasser86 mentioned, rocky banks and riprap are good because those rocks hold more warmth than just about anything else in a given body of water. And rocks provide a lot of hiding spots for forage species like crawfish.
• Bright, sunny days are your friend in winter. The surface warms up, and the fish will come shallow chasing that heat (and the food that'll be there).
• I don't have any data to support this, but I feel like fishing banks that are out of the wind might be a good idea, all other things being equal.

Checking my notes, this is what I catch on in winter:

• jigs (of course, because they catch every day)
• the usual finesse plastic suspects
• lipless crankbaits
• suspending jerkbaits

I kind of want to try a small, slow-sinking swimbait this winter because I kind of think it'll be a banger at the right time.