I get asked about shallow crankbait fishing for bass when the water is cold maybe more than most things in bass fishing. Because it’s one of my favorite ways to catch bass, I just assume everyone thinks like I do when it comes to picking the best locations, good crankbaits and varying retrieves in bass fishing to get bass to bite in cold water.
When I started in the IT field and was getting certified in different technologies, I would go online and read these posts called “brain dumps.” It was basically people coming back and jotting down everything that was on their mind right after they took a test on the subject matter to help other people have a better handle on what to expect and what to study before going to the testing center.
I thought I would attempt to give a “brain dump” of sorts on video on the various things I think about when prespawn cranking. As we illustrated in this longer crankbait fishing video, you can really catch the bass well even when the water is pretty cold, if you understand where to look and why the bass are up there. And then experiment with your crankbait colors for bass and retrieves until you figure out what is catching them the best. I share a pretty cool catch after popping my bait off a snag plus a few cool catches where I show some of my retrieve tricks to get them to bite in cold water.
Tackle Used:
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.