Whether you are fishing late November or early December, the opportunity to load the boat is high. If water temps are in the 50s on your home lake, get off the couch and hit the water. Elite Series pro Drew Benton knows this to be true, and proves it in the pages that follow. From lure selection to water clarity and temperature, he offers a master’s class in locating and catching late fall/early winter bass. He also proves that you don’t always have to fish slow to be effective.
6:40 a.m. Benton and I arrive at Lake R. He pulls an arsenal of Phenix rods equipped with Lew’s reels from storage, then preps his boat for launching.
7 HOURS LEFT
7 a.m. We launch the Phoenix. Benton checks the lake temp: 48 degrees. “The water looks fairly clear, which is good for jerkbaits,” he says. “I plan to mainly focus on classic wintertime structure: rock cover, channel swings, humps, deeper docks. With these low-light conditions, bass shouldn’t be as tight to cover as they would be under sunny skies, so I’ll want to try covering plenty of water with a crankbait.”
7:10 a.m. Benton races to Lake R’s dam, where he roots a red craw Bagley Sunny B crankbait around riprap. “This is an awesome cold-water crankbait; it dives to 8 feet and bumps off cover beautifully.” The plug dredges up a snarl of old fishing line on his first cast.
7:21 a.m. He bags a short fish off the riprap on the Sunny B.
7:26 a.m. Benton idles to a steep bank and tries a pro blue Megabass Vision 110 jerkbait. “I like sunny conditions much better than cloudy for jerkbaits, but the water temp is perfect for this lure.”
7:34 a.m. Benton moves into a residential cove and tries his signature Nichols finesse jig (3/8-ounce Sungill with a generic green pumpkin chunk trailer) in front of a dock.
7:38 a.m. He moves to the opposite shoreline of the cove to try a generic soft swimbait on a 3/8-ounce head.
7:42 a.m. Benton pitches the jig to a weed patch, gets a bump, sets the hook, and the reel falls off his rod. “My bad! I just got all these rods and reels and should have double checked to make sure that reel seat was tight.”
7:45 a.m. He spots a submerged brushpile on his electronics and crawls the jig through it.
7:53 a.m. Benton cranks the brushpile with the Sunny B. “There should have been one there!”
7:58 a.m. Benton jerks the Vision 110 near a boathouse. A keeper bass follows it to the boat. “Two-pounder.”
6 HOURS LEFT
8:03 a.m. Benton idles around the cove. His electronics reveal a strange object on the bottom 14 feet deep. He zooms in tight and exclaims, “Darned if that doesn’t look like a trampoline! It probably blew out of somebody’s yard during a windstorm.”
8:07 a.m. He tries the jig on a nearby point. No takers.
8:15 a.m. Benton runs straight across the lake to crank a rocky point.
8:20 a.m. He crawls the jig across a 10-foot-deep rockpile near the point. “This is exactly the kind of place I’d expect to find bass in winter, but I’m not seeing any sign of life on my electronics.”
8:24 a.m. Benton rigs a generic PBJ colored finesse worm on a tiny drop-shot hook tied a foot above a 3/16-ounce sinker. It’s misting rain as he crawls the rig across the rocks.
8:30 a.m. Benton moves directly over a sunken brushpile, lowers the drop-shot worm into the cover and doodles it up and down. “I’m seeing some fish suspending around that brush, but they may be crappie.”
8:41 a.m. Benton moves 100 yards to a marina, pitches his jerkbait toward an empty boat slip and gets a monumental backlash.
8:48 a.m. He finally untangles the overrun and repositions his boat for hitting the marina slips with the jerkbait.
8:50 a.m. Benton switches to a Lucky Strike jerkbait with a shad colored back and a chartreuse belly. “I want to try something brighter that they can hopefully see better in this cloud cover.”
8:56 a.m. Benton works the jerkbait around the marina walkway, then puts the Minn Kota on high 36 to move to a nearby bank with several submerged trees. He hangs the jerkbait in a tree limb and retrieves it.
9:02 a.m. Benton cranks the Sunny B down the entire length of a submerged tree. “I’m getting absolutely no feedback from these fish!”
9:13 a.m. Benton moves into a shoreline pocket and flips his finesse jig around some stickups.
9:30 a.m. Benton cranks the Merc and makes a high-speed run to the extreme upper end of the lake. Here, the water is considerably murkier than downlake, thanks to run-in from a small inflowing creek. He quickly locates a narrow, 10-foot channel lined with rocks, casts the Sunny B to the depression and bags his first keeper of the day, a 1-pound, 2-ounce largemouth.
9:32 a.m. Benton recasts the Sunny B to the channel and immediately whacks keeper No. 2, 2 pounds, 1 ounce. “They could be stacked up big time in this little ditch! The water running in here is murkier and 4 degrees warmer than downlake.”
9:33 a.m. Benton’s prediction about bass “stacking up” in the murky inflow proves accurate as he hangs a lunker bass on his next cast! He works it around his trolling motor and swings a beautiful 4-pound, 13-ounce largemouth into the boat. “That little channel or ditch is lined with rocks. The Sunny B deflected off a rock and she choked it.”
9:35 a.m. Another good bass “knocks the crap” out of the Super B but doesn’t hook up.
9:40 a.m. Benton bags his fourth keeper, 1 pound even — same spot, same lure.
9:41 a.m. Benton boats keeper No. 5, 1-8, off the rock-lined ditch. “I’m hoping there are some more big ones down there so I can cull. I may have to fish through more of those little guys to get to them.”
9:42 a.m. Another cast, another bass! Benton’s next keeper weighs 1 pound and is no help to his total.
9:44 a.m. He catches a 1-2 keeper on the Sunny B; it culls the 1-pounder caught minutes earlier. “This really isn’t that unusual in winter. If you can find the right spot, you can catch a limit in a hurry.”
9:47 a.m. In an effort to tempt a bigger bass, Benton casts the generic swimbait to the side of the channel and catches another 1-pounder. “So much for that plan!”
9:48 a.m. He catches a 2-3 off the ditch on his next cast. “That’s a little better!”
9:49 a.m. A bass hits the swimbait on the fall and strips it off the hook. Benton rigs a fresh lure. “Rats, I don’t have any super glue in the boat.”
9:52 a.m. Benton cast his signature jig to the ditch and catches a 1-pound, 12-ounce bass. “It doesn’t seem to matter much what you throw at them.”
9:54 a.m. Another keeper bass hits the jig, but it comes unbuttoned at boatside. “Early release!”
9:55 a.m. He catches another 1-pounder on his next cast. “No telling how many that size are down there.”
4 H0URS LEFT
10:01 a.m. A cold 15 mph breeze has kicked in. Benton drops his Power-Poles to anchor his boat, then catches a 1-3 on the jig.
10:03 a.m. Benton ties on a 5-inch Bull Shad jointed swimbait and retrieves it through the ditch. “Anything big enough to eat that bad boy should help my weight total considerably.”
10:04 a.m. The Bull Shad hangs in an unseen obstruction, and Benton moves on top of the ditch to retrieve it. “I hate to mess up this hole, but that lure cost $50, so I need to get it back!”
10:08 a.m. Benton dislodges the swimbait, then backs off the ditch. Suddenly, a school of bass surfaces a long cast away. He flings the crankbait at the schoolies but doesn’t hook up.
10:09 a.m. Benton casts a sexy shad Bagley Rattlin’ B lipless crankbait to the schoolies. “Those fish are feeding on tiny shad.”
10:18 a.m. The schooling activity has ceased, and Benton has spent several minutes fancasting the lipless crank around the back end of the creek arm. “This little channel or ditch snakes all through here, but the fish are definitely focused on the rocky spot I was fishing earlier.”
10:25 a.m. Benton tries a yo-yo retrieve with the lipless crank but hauls water.
10:27 a.m. Benton moves back to his honey hole and immediately gets a hard strike on the Sunny B, but the fish pulls off.
10:28 a.m. Benton catches a 1-13 off the ditch on his next cast. “I guess I didn’t spook them when I moved in there to get my Bull Shad back.”
10:29 a.m. He bags a 1-1 on his next cast.
10:31 a.m. A 2-pounder eats the Sunny B. “Unbelievable!”
10:36 a.m. Benton hangs the Sunny B in fishing line and uses a plug knocker to retrieve it. What’s his take on the day so far? “I went 2 1/2 hours with only one bite, then I pulled onto this little ditch at 9:30, and it’s been nonstop action for the past hour. This spot isn’t producing the quality bites I need, however, so I’m going to look for some other spots that might hold bigger fish. Warmer, murky, inflowing water and rocks are obviously key factors to holding fish; how many similar places there are on this lake remains to be seen.”
10:42 a.m. Benton races downlake and stops to graph open water off a long point. He locates a submerged hump with scattered brush on his electronics and patiently crawls the jig over the structure.
3 HOURS LEFT
11 a.m. The hump fails to produce, so Benton moves farther downlake to a rocky channel bank. He dredges the Sunny B around the rocks and catches a 1-6 largemouth.
11:05 a.m. He catches a 1-14 on his next cast. “They’re on those rocks, probably hunting crawfish.”
11:10 a.m. Benton switches to the Bull Shad and catches a 1-4 largemouth.
11:23 a.m. Having fished the entire length of the steep bank, Benton does a 180 and hits it again with the Bull Shad, Sunny B and jig.
11:25 a.m. Benton catches a 2-pounder on the Sunny B.
11:32 a.m. Benton runs to another steep bank with scattered rocks and tries the Lucky Strike jerkbait. No luck here.
11:49 a.m. He tries the jig on the channel bank without success.
2 HOURS LEFT
12:01 p.m. Benton moves a half-mile downlake to jerkbait a steep bank. It’s misting rain again and the air temp is dropping rapidly. “There’s a huge cold front moving in, and my window of opportunity is about to slam shut! I need to put a big fish in the boat soon.”
12:15 p.m. He pitches his jig to a dock, then goes back to the jerkbait.
12:45 p.m. Having had little success elsewhere, Benton opts to run back uplake to the murky ditch. A bank fisherman has his line set out near the structure, so Benton keeps his distance while fancasting the Sunny B.
12:51 p.m. Benton hangs the Sunny B in a deep stump and breaks it off. “I sure hated to bust that bait off; it’s the only one I’ve got in that red craw color.” He searches through his crankbait stash and replaces it with a chartreuse Sunny B.
12:56 p.m. He rigs a green pumpkin/blue Tightlines UV Craw on a flipping hook with a 5/16-ounce sinker and catches a 1-3 largemouth.
1 HOUR LEFT
1:09 p.m. The bank fisherman departs, so Benton moves within range of the ditch and cranks the chartreuse Sunny B.
1:15 p.m. Benton hasn’t had a strike since he’s returned to the ditch. “These fish have moved! I must have hurt them pretty bad this morning.”
1:29 p.m. Benton vacates the ditch, races back downlake and tries the Pointer on a rocky point.
1:35 p.m. Benton spots a brushpile 18 feet deep on his graph and shakes/drags the drop-shot worm around the structure.
1:46 p.m. Benton races across the lake to a shallow hump, where he tries the drop shot and Sunny B. No luck here, either.
2 p.m. Benton’s time is up. He ends his day on Lake R with 20 keeper bass; his five biggest weigh 13 pounds, 1 ounce.
THE DAY IN PERSPECTIVE
“Most of my 20 keepers came off the same place, a little inflowing channel lined with rocks,” Benton told Bassmaster. “This spot was murkier and about 4 degrees warmer than the rest of the lake; that doesn’t sound like much, but it was obviously a huge reason why they were bunched up there. Unfortunately, most of those fish were cookie-cutter keepers; I was only able to catch one big one off that spot. The cloudy conditions kept fish from suspending, which explains why jerkbaits didn’t work today. There’s a big cold front moving in, and it’s supposed to clear off tonight; if I were to fish here tomorrow, I’d expect to find a lot more fish suspending and holding tight to docks.”
WHERE AND WHEN DREW BENTON CAUGHT HIS FIVE BIGGEST BASS
1. 2 pounds, 1 ounce; red craw Bagley Sunny B crankbait; murky, inflowing creek channel with rocks; 9:32 a.m.
2. 4 pounds, 13 ounces; same lure and place as No. 1; 9:33 a.m.
3. 2 pounds, 3 ounces; generic soft swimbait on 3/16-ounce head; same place as No. 1; 9:48 a.m.
4. 2 pounds; same lure and place as No. 1; 10:31 a.m.
5. 2 pounds; same lure as No. 1; channel bank with rocks; 11:25 a.m.
TOTAL: 13 POUNDS, 1 OUNCE