During the winter months, you can take a few different approaches. One is with faster-moving baits like jerkbaits and Alabama rigs to imitate shad, or you can slow it down with jigs and soft plastics to match the crawfish. Major League Fishing pro Brent Ehrler takes a different strategy altogether and says the crankbait is his prime weapon for fishing during the coldest part of the year.
Shallow cranking in the cold
There are many ways to catch them in the winter, but Ehrler likes a crankbait because it allows him to make repeated casts to likely areas and trigger bites.
"I crank a lot in the winter with a Lucky Craft 1.5 DD DRS and 2.5 DRS in shad colors. They always do the best for me in the colder times of the year," he said. "I feel like fish want something moving fast, which is the opposite of what you would think because the water is cold. Fishing something slow and methodical in front of them, like a worm or a jig, they'll watch it go by them on the bottom a lot of times."
Instead, he's looking to garner a reaction from the fish and will make repeated casts to the same areas. "I'll cast five or ten times to the exact area and let that bait hit the cover and deflect multiple times," he said. "It's almost like the fish snap to attention and will bite suddenly because it's so different to them. You'll get many more bites by triggering those quick reactions this time of year because the fish will be more lethargic."
Because he's looking to make repeated casts to the same area, Ehrler is somewhat selective about where he's fishing. While he won't avoid long stretches of good looking cover and structure, the isolated targets become much more effective.
"If you are cranking down a whole stretch of riprap, all of those fish are going to be spread out over the whole bank," he said. "Sure, you'll catch some, but if you can find a small patch of rocks or isolated tree, all of the fish in the area will gravitate to that cover and you can catch multiple fish off the same place. With this approach, those areas always seem to do better for me because you can catch multiple bass from one spot."
Ehrler will continue with this strategy for most of the late fall and through the winter months until the fish start to move in preparation for the spawn.
"The bite starts late in the year and goes until the prespawn. It's a big window for when this will work," he said. "When they start to all slide shallow to stage and eventually spawn, they are moving quickly are others ways to approach it. This works for the fish in their winter pattern and staying there."
Cranking gear
A big debate in crankbait fishing is whether to use graphite, fiberglass, or a blend of both for your cranking rod. Ehrler is a big proponent of glass for many moving baits and that's why his signature series cranking rods in the Daiwa Tatula Elite lineup are made with this material.
"Glass has a dampening effect, whereas with graphite, you feel everything and it can be too much," he said. "You want that delay so you aren't pulling back on every little tick of your bait. The glass delays the bite a second, so you don't pull too quickly and miss the fish or pull the trebles from their mouth."
He opts for the 1.5 size bait for the 7-foot, 2-inch medium heavy model and the 8-foot medium heavy for the larger baits, both rods that he designed especially for crankbait fishing.
"The 8-foot rod bombs a bait way out there and it's simple, but the farther you can cast, the deeper your bait will go," he said. "I use that rod for all the bigger crankbaits but not the huge stuff. It's great for 2.5 and 3.5 size crankbaits."
He likes the Daiwa Tatula Elite in the 6.3:1 gear ratio for reels and spools them with a 12-pound Sunline fluorocarbon line. "That reel is made for long casts and again, you want to do what you can to get that bait down deeper and in the strike zone longer," he adds.
When winter arrives each year, Brent Ehrler knows that fishing a crankbait on isolated targets is one of his pathways to success in cold water. It's worked for him for years, and this year, it will be his plan every time he hits the water during this offseason before the Bass Pro Tour returns early in 2024.