Each winter, when the season winds down, you can still find Major League Fishing pro Fletcher Shryock fishing as much as he can. It's what he does every year and it keeps his skills sharp and allows him to be mentally ready for when the next season begins early next year. No matter where he finds himself fishing, he has some general rules for fishing this time of year to capitalize on the bite windows and catch the biggest fish in the lake.
Switching from plastics to jigs
Shryock does many things well and needs to as a professional angler, but some of his best success in big tournaments has come by fishing soft plastic baits. He loves to flip and pitch in heavy cover and does it across the country, but during the winter months, he changes his tune.
"I love to pitch soft plastic baits, but start to put those away during the colder months and go with a jig instead," he said. "It's something I've done for years and once the temperatures get below around 55 degrees or less, they seem to bite the jig much better than they will a soft plastic bait."
His winter jig of choice is a 3/8-ounce Buckeye Lures Ballin' Out, a round head design that does excellent in wooded or rocky cover. On the back, he still likes a plastic; his favorite is the Yamamoto Psycho Dad.
"It's a good looking and lifelike craw bait, but it also doesn't have too much action," he said. "Most of the time during the winter months, the water is pretty clear because there haven't been those strong rains and the lakes haven't had a lot of runoff. That's why that subtle bait does so well."
Shryock said that although the bait is plastic, it has some of the same qualities of an old-school favorite: the pork trailer. "It has that same action that pork does on the back of a jig, but the claws also float up and it looks very lifelike."
Typically, he's fishing the jig shallow, even in the dead of winter. "Those big fish will still slide up very shallow in the middle of the winter," he said. "If the air temperatures are really cold, even in the 30s, the warmest water in the lake is going to be up shallow, and the fish will move up there when they want to feed."
Over the years, he's also noticed some distinct bite windows for winter fishing. Both early and late can be productive, in his experience.
"You are usually going to have a strong bite first thing in the morning for an hour or so and then it usually gets pretty stingy for a few hours," he said. "Things generally pick up again in the afternoon when the water has had a chance to warm up more after the sun has been out for a while."
When fishing the Ballin' Out and Psycho Dad combo, he usually looks for shallow cover but will fish it slightly deeper sometimes.
"I like to pitch it out to bluffs, laydowns, and docks," he said. "The more vertical the cover, the better when the water is colder. The fish start to get off the 45-degree banks when it gets really cold and tend to like the more vertical stuff, and this jig is perfect for pitching and letting it fall vertically along the structure or cover."
The in-between stuff
While the jig is an excellent option for fishing in the winter just about everywhere, Shryock also likes to fish a moving bait as he moves in between likely spots with his trolling motor. One of the best situations is flats between some shallow cover, which bass will use to chase baitfish even late into the year.
"Even when it's freezing out, bass schooling on baitfish is still a big part of my approach," he said. "You'll still see those shad flickering and getting pushed late into the year on flats, points, and little drains."
When he sees this, his best way to imitate them is with a ¼-ounce Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap and one of his favorite hues is called Silverado.
"That small trap is great for fishing shallow water and it does a great job of matching those tiny shad," he said. "I like to fish it with a straight retrieve and will even use it in really shallow water. It's a good one-two punch; I'll fish the jig around wood, docks, and stuff like that and fish the trap in between on the flatter stuff."
When fishing during winter, Fletcher Shryock keeps things fairly basic and uses what works to imitate both crawfish and shad. It's an approach he uses throughout the late fall and winter and has served him well over the years.
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