Break the cold front curse
By David Hart

Some things never fail. Three or four days of stable weather always seem to be followed by an equal amount of cool, breezy, bluebird days — the result of a cold front.

And those post-front days usually happen at the worst possible time: the first day of a tournament or right before that eagerly anticipated fishing trip to a hot lake. Catching bass on the heels of a front isn't easy. In fact, it's downright difficult. But the good news is that it can be done, and some anglers seem to excel when things take a turn for the worse. If you tend to live in a state of denial, however, and continue to throw buzzbaits over shallow flats on a breezy, cool, cloudless day, you'll struggle. But if you can force yourself to abandon yesterday's hot, pre-front pattern and figure out a new one, you will catch fish.

Bill Kramer, a Potomac River guide and veteran tournament angler, fell into that same trap that catches so many Bassmasters.

 

"There was a day last spring when I had two clients out who were just 'crushing' nice bass on topwaters in 2 feet of water over emerging grass. We left at dark, with the fish biting," he recalls. "I went back to the exact spot 10 hours later with new clients, but they didn't get a bite. Nothing. We finally started catching fish when we backed out to slightly deeper water and slow rolled 1/8-ounce spinnerbaits over the grassbeds."

Kramer knew something was different, but the hope of putting clients on a hot topwater bite was too much to resist. There was a slight breeze the previous day, and that light wind continued the following morning. But the air was less humid, and the puffy white clouds that were present the previous evening were gone, leaving a clear, bluebird sky.

"You could just tell it wasn't the same, and the fish certainly proved it," he shrugs.

Kramer finally did what he knew he should have done right from the beginning - he changed tactics.

 

Understanding cold fronts

 

 

 

 

 Fishing for suspended post-front bass

 

 

Bass that suspend over deep water on the heels of a front are considered the most difficult bass to catch, particularly in highland reservoirs. Those deep, steep, clear water lakes often don't have the textbook post-front cover so many Bassmasters are used to fishing.

 

 

"Before I try to catch those suspended bass, I'm going to look for the dirtiest water I can find, which is usually in the upper end of a lake or in the backs of feeder creeks," says Alabama pro and 1999 B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year Tim Horton. "Bass in murky water tend to hold real tight to cover after a front passes, so they are easier to locate."

 

 

If he can't find colored water, he'll pull crankbaits along steep bluffs, hoping to elicit a reaction bite from those suspended bass. What he uses depends on the depth of the water, but he typically wants a crankbait with a tight, vibrating action - such as a Bomber Flat A. The key is to make repeated casts to the same area, ensuring that a bait is going right through the pods of bass.

 

 

"If the fish are suspended in 15 feet of clear water, they are real tough to catch because they tend to spook real easily. But if they are suspended over 40 feet of water, they don't spook as much. I'd rather fish for bass suspended over deep water than shallow water," notes Horton.

 

 

To catch those fish holding over deep, open water, Horton likes to use a Cordell C.C. Spoon, lifting it only 2 or 3 inches at a time. The bite will be subtle, he adds, so it's important to set the hook at the first sign of resistance.

 

 

A cold front is nothing more than a demarcation line between warm air and cold air trying to push its way through a region, typically from the north. As the seasons change, the atmosphere is essentially trying to reach a level of equalization, creating a never-ending fight between warm, stable air and cold, unsettled air. With the passing of a cold front, the barometric pressure rises, and that high pressure often takes the blame for poor fishing.

 

And as every hardcore bass angler knows, once the barometer returns to a lower reading, the fishing improves — often dramatically. Sometimes it takes a week, or even more, for the pressure to return to "normal," although there really is no "normal" level.

 

 

A front isn't necessarily preceded by rain or heavy cloud cover, and it isn't always followed by strong winds or drastically cooler temperatures, although that's what most bass anglers tend to associate with such a weather system. A cold front can be little more than an invisible line that passes over the region, offering only a slight change in the temperature, humidity or wind direction.

 

"The best way to understand the passing of a cold front is to draw a circle and then draw arrows pointing in a clockwise direction," explains John Newkirk of the Baltimore/Washington office of the National Weather Service. "The circle represents the front, and the arrows represent the wind direction. You can get an idea of where the front is in relation to where you are based on the wind direction. And just because it's not windy any more doesn't mean the front has passed. You may just be in the middle of it."

 

So what's to blame for the tough fishing? Nobody really knows, although most people readily point to the rise in barometric pressure, which is influenced by slight changes in the gravitational pull, according to Newkirk.

 

"People tend to key in on barometric pressure because that's the easiest thing to measure," says Gene Gilliland, a research biologist with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. "The speculation is that it affects a fish's swim bladder, but there is no scientific evidence to back that up. It may be true, but so far, no one has proved that to be the only thing that affects bass. I think cold fronts affect the whole arena, from plankton and algae on up to the largest predators."

Cold fronts aren't simply an increase in barometric pressure, he adds. They can change every aspect of a lake or river, including water temperature, water clarity, light intensity, wind speed and wind direction.

"There are too many variables, and I don't think we will ever be able to measure exactly how and why cold fronts affect bass behavior," concludes Gilliland.

One thing is certain, however: Most anglers, even the country's top pros, have a hard time putting together a winning strategy on the tail end of a front. It's almost as if the fish have packed their bags and hitched a ride to a place with more stable conditions.

Stay on 'em

Mississippi pro Paul Elias says that in some ways, catching post-front bass can actually be easier than during periods of mild, stable weather, particularly in the spring. The reason?

"When those big females pull out of the spawning flats, they really stack up together on the first drop near the flat. Even in the summer and fall, bass tend to gather in predictable places after a front," he says. "It's actually pretty exciting because when you find them, the action can be fantastic."

The hard part, he admits, is finding that pod of fish. But even that isn't as difficult as it often seems to be. Elias typically starts working points adjacent to shallow flats in the spring. If those don't produce, he'll probe creek channels, particularly where the channel makes a sharp bend or where another creek meets the primary creek channel. He rarely works water more than 15 feet deep during that time of year.

Where most anglers fail, he figures, is in their lack of confidence in a particular area. If they don't catch a fish within an hour or so, insecure anglers blame it on the weather and assume the bass simply aren't willing to hit anything. Or they figure the fish have abandoned the area entirely. But if the bass were there a week ago, insists Elias, the odds are good they haven't migrated far after the passing of a cold front. They simply move tight to cover or pull out to deeper structure and wait for the nasty conditions to pass.

Kramer agrees. During a tournament on New York's Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River, he found good numbers of smallmouth bass in shallow water on the first day of the tournament, but a front blasted through and killed that pattern. After a thorough search, the Maryland resident found the fish stacked up on a deeper rockpile about 150 yards away from the shallow flat that produced the previous day.

Elias had a similar experience during a tournament on Florida's Lake Kissimmee. A front came through early on the first day, but instead of abandoning the shallow water pattern that produced during the practice period, he stuck with it for the first two days of competition. Several hours into the final day, Elias backed off to the outside edge of the grassline — where only a few isolated clumps of vegetation grew — and started slow cranking an old Mann's lipless crankbait, called a Fin Mann, through the sparse grass. It worked.

"I caught a nice fish right away, and then it seemed as though I caught another one about every 20 or 25 casts, all from an area about the size of two living rooms," he recalls. "If I had made the decision to back off earlier, I'm sure I could have placed close to the top."

 

Elias and Kramer typically find post-front bass through a process of elimination, often starting shallow just to make sure the fish aren't still in those places they were before the front came through. Contrary to popular belief, bass don't always abandon skinny water for the safety of deeper cover, favoring instead to move close to hard cover such as a rockpile, a fallen tree or shallow stumps.

"I might work shallow cover for three or four hours before I make the switch and back out to deeper water," says Elias. "I'm going to stay in an area that I'm confident has fish, and I'm going to keep working on them until they bite."

Kramer will stay in an area for several hours as well, unless he has restless clients in his boat. If that's the case, he'll spend about an hour trying to piece together a pattern before he searches for more active fish. The key, he notes, is to fish tight to cover.

"You just have to keep hammering away at them," adds Elias. "Sooner or later, those fish are going to turn on, even on those post-front days."

 

Best baits

While some pros switch to finesse tactics and scale down the size of their baits to entice finicky bass, Elias doesn't. Instead of ditching big baits, he simply fishes them slower, and he covers the water much more thoroughly. He'll sometimes spend an entire day in one small pocket casting to fish he knows are there.

Both experts agree that what you throw is less important than where or how you use it. Should you scale down? Sometimes, says Kramer, but that depends on a variety of factors, most notably, clear water. In that situation, it usually pays to drop down to 4-inch soft plastics, 1/8-ounce jigs and the usual assortment of finesse baits.

In normal water conditions — that is, lakes and rivers with some color to the water — Kramer and Elias will stick with larger baits such as jigs, soft plastics and crankbaits. "One of my favorite things to throw is a floating crankbait," says Kramer. "I'll slowly crank a Poe's 200 or 400 — it depends on the depth — around stumps and rocks, trying to bump into everything that's out there. When I hit something, I'm going to let that bait just float up toward the surface. That's when bass usually hit it."

One of Elias' favorite post-front tactics is to pull a Carolina-rigged 6-inch Mann's Draggin' Lizard through deeper stumps and rocks on the ends of points near creek channels. The trick, he says, is to work it slower than you normally would, and then slow it down some more.

"When the weight hits something, I'll let it sit there for four or five seconds before I shake the rod tip to free the weight," he says. "You don't want to pull too hard; otherwise, the weight will come free and the lizard will jump forward a couple of feet. Bass won't chase a bait after a front, so you need to keep it in front of them for a long time. I think that's the key to catching post-front bass."