cold weather

Question
how do you like to fish florida lakes in the colder month..
during early summer i was doing well on rattle traps jerk baits and spinners.  then it seem like the plastic worm bite pick up better .. but now with these recent  cold fronts i can seem to find them on any lure  

Answer
Steve; Maybe I shouldn't try to answer this one because I have very little experience with fishing downstate Florida lakes.  I have lived in the Panhandle and now in South Georgia.  The lakes here are quite different from those in central and South Florida.

However, I do know that those shallow lakes in Florida are probably more difficult to fish successfully after a strong cold front.  In deeper lakes with lots of wood cover and structure such as channels and dropoffs and sunken islands the fish can often be caught even after a  cold front.  Usually worms, crankbaits or topwaters will not catch bass following a cold front.  Probably the use of a jig &pig pitched or flipped into the thick weed beds would be your best bet.  If there is any cover other than weeds toss your jig as close as possible to the cover. Move is slowly in little tiny movements then with a little bigger hop followed by more tiny movements.  

In the heavy weeds use a heavy jig or add a heavy weight to make it fall through the weeds.  Often the weeds have open water under them.  Try getting your jig in that open water and yo-yo ing it under the weed tops. Be patient and work slowly as you must put your lure in a bass's face and keep it there tantalizingly within reach.  Quite often this may be a situation where you only get one or two bites all day but the chances are good that one of those bites will be a big bass.

Open water is probably a  waste of time but if all else fails give it a try.  I hit a hole one time in shallow water that had virtually no cover.  It was just a little hollow in an otherwise flat area.  It wasn't more than six inches deeper than the surrounding area but a bottom bumping crankbait slowly pulled through that hole found bass willing to bite and I caught some nice ones. This is an unusual situation but you can expect unusual things from bass.

After cold front fishing is not my favorite fishing but I will still go and at times it has payed off and at other times I drew blanks with everything I tried, but then that is bass fishing.

I hope this has been of some use.  If not maybe you can contact someone else on AllExperts.  If I can be of other help sometime please feel free to contact me via AllExperts.

I am
Jack L. Gaither
Lake Seminole Georgia
Jackfromseminole