Winter Grub Fishing: A Classic Bait That Always Crushes

When the weather outside is frightful, but a fire inside is so delightful, some anglers still brave the cold because they know the bass are biting. Winter grub fishing can be a quick way to fill the boat when faced with winter lockjaw.

Relying on your electronics will help you find wintertime bass in deep water. While keeping a vigil on your electronics, look for any sort of fish activity, whether it’s bass or baitfish. When you locate a big pod of baitfish on your depthfinder, you can mill around the area until you find the edge of the school. It is usually easier to catch bass by presenting your lure on the edge of the baitfish school rather than making presentations into the thick of the baitfish pod.

Winter Grub Fishing: Where To Fish A Grub

When you locate bass in deep water, you can catch aggressive fish on a jigging spoon. However, as the water gets colder and the fish become more sluggish try switching to a single-tail plastic grub for your vertical jigging presentation. It seems like the colder the water, the less action bass want on a bait so the subtle grub produces better than the spoon.

A 3 1/2- or 4-inch plastic grub like the Zoom Fat Albert attached to a 1/4- or 3/8-ounce darter jighead works best for fishing deep. The darter jighead matches up best with the grub because it falls faster than a ball-type jighead. Productive grub colors are smoke with black flake, salt-and-pepper and pearl with black flake.

Spinning gear works best for grub tricks. Match your grub with a 6 1/2-foot medium action rod and a spinning reel filled with 6-pound fluorocarbon line. For the coldest days, use monofilament line, which coils less than fluorocarbon in frigid temperatures.

Winter Grub Fishing: Finding The Right Action

The mood of the fish dictates how to present your grub. A lot of times the fish like it sitting dead still and other times they want you to jiggle it like a crappie jig. If you see fish on your depthfinder screen rising up to look at the bait but the fish drops back down, raise your lure a couple of feet to coax the fish into another look. If this fails to produce, reel in the lure and you can usually trigger a strike on the next drop by slowly reeling up the grub if you see a bass coming close to the lure.

Rather than watch bass being caught on television this winter, grab some grubs and go deep to experience your own bass action on a clear-water lake.