Cold front bass

[Jeff13]

Heading up to fish the Whitefish chain this weekend. I noticed it says a high of 62 on Saturday and mid 60's Sunday. What kind of approach do you guys take to coax bass when cold fronts move through?

[slabz]

Slow down and down size.

[Craigums]

Usually have to finesse them. Which shouldn't be a problem if your fishing the Chain. I'd find a weededge and just work a dropshot.

[RK]

Hiya -

Hopefully based on either reports or past experience you have something of a handle on where fish were before the front rolled through (and this one looks to be a doozy).

With LMB, especially when you're talking weedline fish, they really don't move all that far but just seem to tuck in a little (or a lot) tighter to cover. Along with that, their strike window really shrinks. You have to get something right in their wheelhouse because they won't chase a bait down.

Drop shotting can be a good option for sure. Just poke along a weed edge. I really prefer small jigs though...

Tucked in a compartment in my boat I have a 'panic box' that is basically a cold front toolkit. about all it has in it are what I call paddle tail and boot tail grubs.

What I mean by those terms: a paddle tail grub has a fat cylindrical body and a flat, wide tail that doesn't have any action at all. It's just flat and parallel to the lure body. The oldest example (which I still use) is the Mann's Stingray Grub. I think that bait has been around at least 30 years. The Producto Tournament Grub is a good one too. A boot-tail grub has a fat body and a swimbait type tail that a lot of people now call paddle tails, which gets confusing... My favorite of those was one made by Mann's. (When they quit making it I panicked and bought 500 of them in my favorite color. I have maybe half that left ) The best currently-available example is the Lunker City Grubster.

I like them in subtle, translucent colors. Smoke, avocado green, motor oil... I could get by fine with nothing but smoke though.

I fish both of these on a fairly light jighead - as light as I can possible get away with. You're really just fishing the weight of the jig. If you can feel it, it's too heavy. Can be tough with cold front wind, but fluorocarbon is a huge, huge help with that since it sinks rather than blowing around on the surface like mono. I just poke and prod my way along a weedline, letting them fall onto weed stalks and shaking them free. The boot tails don't even move fast enough to wiggle most of the time. It's just a parachute to slow the thing down. You can't cover much water, but these little baits get in a fish's face in such a subtle way... Strikes are just dead weight, maybe a line twitch. A lot of the time it just feels like your jig dropped into a bowl of oatmeal all of a sudden. When in doubt, set the hook. Amazing how often a 'weed' turns out to be a fish. If I am on a spot I know has fish, I'll actually anchor...

Like I said, a lot of guys will drop-shot and that does work. But I just have a ton of confidence in my old grubs...

If you're coming into a lake cold, it gets a lot tougher if you don't have fish located or at least have an educated guess on where they are. In cases like that I'll fish either a crankbait or a heavy jig and pig and try to get a reaction bite to help me locate fish, then slow down and fish through the area more thoroughly.

My $.02...

[Jeff13]

Thanks RK that was a very detailed post! I fish the chain a lot so I do have areas from past experience that tend to produce. Thinking about hitting some smaller lakes around to since the wind is going to be kicking.

[Juan Grande]

RK is the master of educational posts. I suspect some formal writing background

[Gekhang]

prefishing a new body of water in post cold front conditions, i started slow for a few hours with no luck at all on a rock point. moved to a different spot and two immediate bites on the fall and threw a spinnerbait, pounding the shoreline and had 5-6 more 2lbers slamming them hard getting the first hook and not the trailer hook with a bunch chasing it down and had a few boatside hits and miss. fishing near a ledge, my buddy throws out a crankbait working perpendicular to it and pulled in a few more. and so i worked a point with similar depths with cranks and pulled out 13-15 more! none over 3lbers tho. what would you have done to find them biggins? water temp was anywhere between 68-71. this was on saturday btw.

[Jeff13]

I fished clamshell and Bertha on Saturday. The wind was outrageous and it felt like October. I started with a wacky on the edge of the weeds on a few spots and got bass to commit nothing bigger than 16 inches. Got bored of the few spots I could manage with the wind and tried flipping into thick weed pockets in the the shallows 5 feet or less and caught a few more fish. Nothing to brag about but still a fun day despite the weather. Wanted to fish Whitefish and Trout but it was nasty on the big water.

[Fairchild_82]

fished tonka saturday. I'm not sure if anyone was getting any 4+pounders. talked to a lot of guys and it was all the same thing. SMALL SMALL SMALL... The bigger bass i think are a little deeper; 9+ft in cover and NOT MOVING! (during this cold front)I tried fishing deeper weeds, the edges and the thickest. Real slow. Tried drop shot and power worms, nothing big but still got some. Really have to get the bait right in their face and fish slow and hold it on the bottom (30 seconds maybe) until they will take it. They were real picky this weekend.

[CANOPY SAM]

Had exactly the same results up north this weekend. Had to put a bait right on the X, and sometimes several times until a fish would commit. Had one real good fish come out from under a dock, but came unbuttoned boatside. Otherwise everything was 14-16 inches.

[Mons]

I found almost exactly the same thing as Bass Assassin on Tonka Sunday. We fished weed edges and points in 10-15 fow and managed 7 bass between 1-2 pounds in a couple of hours. All fish came on a slowly worked jigworm. No signs of any bigger fish.

[Doufish2]

Small, small, small! Fished in southern MN Saturday, wind was tough and rain sucked. Nothing over 14", everything on a paddle tailed jig worm worked very boringly slow on the deep edges. Did catch one monster dog fish, put up one hell of a fight!!

[mojoputter]

Tourney on Minnetonka on Sunday, deep weedline, working it painfuly slow, found a good spot, had our 5 fish after about and hour and a half, ended up just shy of 14 pounds. Berkley power hog was the hot bait, first 2 were 18"ers, then three 17"ers. Partner was using a watermelon colored senko, but liked the power hog much better. Just couldn't find that kicker. Big fish for the tourney was 3.9lbs

[thatoneguy]

Maybe things had stabilized enough post-front that there was a return to semi-normal by Sunday evening. I went out yesterday for about an hour and a half on Leech. Figured on a tough cold front bite, so I started small and slow, and had one 11" fish after 45 min.

I switched to aggressively splashing a frog over gaps in the rice, and caught 7 fish (19" was the largest) in the next 45 min.

Normally I start aggressive and work backwards from there...wish I had done that yesterday!

[jalberg]

THe fish had certainly moved off of the deep spots that they were schooling up on. I found a few nice ones shallower in heavy cover.

[RumRiverRat]

Spent 10 hours on Eagle Lake in Maple Grove on Saturday. Took me 5 hours to catch my first bass a 14" fish. I then caught 5 more in the next 15 minutes. Then I caught 7 more in the next 4.5 hours.

Incredibly tough bite. Big fish was just over 18".

The rest were 12 to 15".

All fish ate a Zoom Brush Hog texas rigged with a 3/16oz tungsten weight.

All the fish came out of less than 4 feet of water in heavy cover.

I tried heavy jigs, light jigs, punch rig,heavy and light weight texas rigs,deep weedline,shallow inside weedline, docks, pads/slop, deep cranks, medium cranks,shallow cranks, lipless cranks, slow rolling big,single blade spinnerbaits, hard multi jointed swimbaits, soft plastic swimbaits.

Was a mental grind, many times I wanted to call it a day, but I had nothing else to do so I toughed it out and kept fishingm

[Fairchild_82]

Tonka Saturday, our biggest was a 3 1/2 lbs. Came early in the moring, shallow on cover (log) When the sun was out and shining. Probably just under 2 feet of water. South side of Big Island. Looked like it was going to be a decent session... Clouds came, wind picked up, rain came in and everything went out the door. atleast the traffic wasn't so bad..

[slopmaster]

Fished a tourney in the north metro area on saturday and ended up with 14lbs. All came on a 3/4 football jig dragged slow through deep rock in 8-16ft. Biggest fish was 4.59lbs and lost one around 5.5lbs when she jumped and threw the jig. We tried dropshot/shakey heads/ cranks/ plastics all in the same area and nothing.