I am gearing up to fish some small impoundment ponds in winter, with dams about 20 ft - 30 ft high.  

 

I am in Georgia, where the water cools into the 30's and 40's in winter, and bass fishing slows down considerably in the ponds.

 

In recent years, I have had success fishing shallow areas during warming trends.

 

I have read lots of articles that indicating that the bass go down into the deepest parts of the ponds, particularly near the upstream side of the dam.

 

I gravitate to shallow-water methods, but I am interested in methods to find and catch bass in these deep areas in the winter.

 

I was thinking of throwing deep-diving cranks to get down on the bottom, or maybe drop shotting.  

 

Interested in hearing if anyone has had any success catching bass in the deep parts of ponds like this in the winter, and what approaches have been successful for these areas.

My go to last winter was jigs and shakey heads with finesse worms.  I don't have any experience deep cranking during the winter, so I'm not gonna offer any misinformation.  Both of my aforementioned presentations caught fish in the deepest parts of the ponds I fish.

13 minutes ago, Hook2Jaw said:

Both of my aforementioned presentations caught fish in the deepest parts of the ponds I fish.

@Hook2Jaw Appreciate hearing that from someone who knows my kind of conditions.  Were you using a fishfinder to target them, or any other way of locating them? 

 

I've learned to pick targets in our ponds based on known structure or cover, but with the deep part of the pond I'm not sure if I have the patience to fan cast and slowly work a bait back.   If that's what I need to do to get bit, I will do it, and might eventually figure out if there are some areas where they tend to congregate down there.  

I've fished every week since the weather cooled off, I fish ponds, mostly shallow ones a few deep ones.  I've thrown a lot of stuff and found after a few  sunny days the bass move to mid depths and banks close to deep water.  I caught one bass today and missed 2.  Inline spinners work well in cold water, I've fished them for years.  Live bait night crawlers and minnows rigged on Carolina rig or split shot catches crappie, bass and brim if you have the patience to sit still for a while.  It's winter fishing really fall is gone here, so it's slow going.  I'm going to fish the ponds that are stocked with trout starting next week, never targeted them so it might be fun. 

3 hours ago, snake95 said:

@Hook2Jaw Appreciate hearing that from someone who knows my kind of conditions.  Were you using a fishfinder to target them, or any other way of locating them? 

 

I've learned to pick targets in our ponds based on known structure or cover, but with the deep part of the pond I'm not sure if I have the patience to fan cast and slowly work a bait back.   If that's what I need to do to get bit, I will do it, and might eventually figure out if there are some areas where they tend to congregate down there.  

 

I'm working off of known structure and cover, either from finding it myself during routine fishing, or hearing from the pond owners.   They're not big bodies of water.  For larger bodies I do bust out the kayak and electronics.

I like to fish the areas that the deep water comes near the shore and make cast parallel to the shoreline with a suspending jerkbait and fish it along slowly. Slowly bumping a shad rap along the edge of the drop can be good too. Dragging a shakyhead or tube perpendicular up the drops is good when the fish are pinned to the bottom.

Deep diving cranks work better from a boat than bank because they float and dive . From a boat they follow the contour down so they stay near the bottom for a long period. From bank the opposite is true . A lipless bait or other sinking lure when allowed to sink will follow the contour from deep to shallow staying near the bottom on the entire cast . I like to fish   the dams with sinking lures . Good candidates would be jig and grub , soft plastic swimbaits , crappie jigs , beetle spins , roadrunners ,  lipless cranks , blade baits and others.