Home Fishing Tips Epic Day Shallow Cranking for Cold Water Bass

Epic Day Shallow Cranking for Cold Water Bass

Jason Sealock
Feb 15, 2018

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I wanted to share one of the better days of bass fishing I had this time last year with Terry Bolton after a day of warm rain and sun heated up the shallow dirty water in the backs of some creeks. It was early February and water temps had been in the 40s but warmed to 50 degrees by the end of the day, and the shallow crankbait bite kept getting better and better even as an approaching cold front, heavy wind, sleet and rain made for challenging fishing conditions.

Bolton and I share some tips and our fun day of fishing in this longer format video to help those of you still fighting to get through the winter without much fishing. We share some of what we look for, recycling areas, changing cadence, lure selection and more. I will have a follow-up video that focuses more on playing the water and choosing locations for good prespawn shallow crankbait fishing for bass.

Tackle used in this video:

Rapala Shad Rap
Spro Little John
Rapala Shad Dancer
Rapala DT 4
Seaguar 12-pound InvizX fluorocarbon
Sufix 12-pound Invisiline
Lew’s Custom Speed Stick Wart Rod
Lew’s BB1 Pro Speed Spool Reel
Daiwa Tatula Medium Light Crankbait Rod
Daiwa Tatula 6.3:1 Reel
Minn Kota Ultrex

Jason Sealock

Currently working as Senior Advisor to Wired2fish. Former COO and Publisher, Jason Sealock came to Wired2fish shortly after inception in January of 2010. Prior to that he was the Editor-in-Chief of FLW Outdoors Magazines. He worked up from Associate Editor to Photo Editor and finally Editor in Chief of three magazines FLW Bass, FLW Walleye and FLW Saltwater. He set the content direction for Wired2fish while also working directly with programmers, consultants and industry partners. Sealock has been an avid angler for the better part of 40 years and has been writing and shooting fishing and outdoors content for more than 25 years. He is an expert with fishing electronics and technologies and an accomplished angler, photographer, writer and editor. He has taught a lot of people to find fish with their electronics and has been instrumental in teaching these technologies to the masses. He's also the industry authority on new fishing tackle and has personally reviewed more than 10,000 products in his tenure. He has a 30-year background in information technologies and was a certified engineer for a time in Microsoft, Novell, Cisco, and HP. He mostly fishes for bass and panfish around the house. He has, however, caught fish in 42 of the 50 states in the US as well as Costa Rica, Mexico, and Canada and hopes to soon add Finland, Japan, Africa and Australia to his list.

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