The Best Tactics For Largemouths Under The Ice

During harsh winters with thick ice and heavy snow cover, aquatic weeds die back quicker due to lack of nourishment from reduced sunlight penetration. During mild winters with thinner ice and less snow cover, some spots on the weedline stay thick and green all winter. The best spots tend to be inside turns in the weedline facing south. These areas catch more sunlight than straight sections of weedline and far more sunlight than weedlines facing north. Cups create all kinds of natural ambush areas for bass, too. "The best way to find these spots is with a boat during late fall, when bass are still biting jig-and-pork combos, hair jigs, and plastic craws. Follow the weedline, find those cups facing south that hold bass, and mark them with GPS coordinates. In years when all the weeds die under the ice, follow the slope down from those same spots to transition areas between hard and soft bottom, where the break hits the basin. Gradual slopes hold more largemouth bass in most lakes. Simply comb the 12- to 17-foot areas beyond the weedline. If bass were on those weeds in November, they probably won't be far away in January.

Modified tactics are the final key. While bass will bite a 1/100-ounce jig tipped with a couple maggots, they tend to go a little better on slightly larger jig, like a 1/80- to 1/32-ounce model, tipped with three or four maggots or a tiny plastic worm. I still like to fish these jigs on 2-pound line because it's so much fun, but best to use a tough 4- to 6-pound line anywhere near thick weeds.

A flat-sided, minnow-imitating jig like the Comet Tackle Shiner or the old Lindy-Little Joe Flat are among my favorite jig styles because they spiral on the drop. Something about a spiraling jig mesmerizes winter bass. The plastics I like for largmouths are very small, often less than an inch long. Tails that taper to a thin, quivering tip are my favorites, baits like the ISG Leechette or the Custom Jigs & Spins Wedgie. Run these onto a Lindy-Little Joe Fat Boy, Custom Jigs & Spins Rat Finkee or ISG Plankton-Series Jig so they lay straight, perpendicular to bottom. In the right colors, these plastics look for all the world like tiny crappie minnows, leeches, aquatic worms and other things that bass are keying on in this slower metabolic state.

Highly active bass tend to cruise around about 4 or 5 feet off bottom in basin areas. They often appear as a green flicker that slowly solidifies into a big red mark on a color flasher. Then the mark steadily fades back to a green flicker and disappears, because these fish are constantly on the move.

Quickly raise or drop the jig to that level and start jigging. If the red mark stays on the screen and doesn't fade away, it's probably staring at your jig. (A camera could verify this, of course, but you really don't need an underwater video camera to catch largemouths. In fact, I think cameras spook bass in clear water, but check it for yourself.) Lift the jig about 8 inches and let it fall. Then pause, let the jig settle for 10 to 20 seconds, and repeat. Over and over again. I've had largemouths stare at this presentation for several long minutes before they finally inhaled the tiny jig.

Some days, you seldom feel them take it. The next time you try to lift the jig it feels like it snagged a log. Other days bass just blast it and keep going. Either way, the drag starts to scream and before you know it there's 60 or 70 feet of line to retrieve with a rogue bucketmouth cavorting around on the other end.

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