When it comes to year-round versatility, there aren’t many baits better than a finesse swimbait.
They are subtle, realistic, easy to fish, and incredibly effective. During the winter months everything slows down and it can become hard to effectively cover water.
Finesse swimbait fishing is one of the few techniques that will allow you to cover water and still trigger cold water bites.
The first situation where I pick up the finesse swimbaits is when I don’t quite know where the bass are.
Large expansive flats, deep grass edges, ponds without much cover, and large creek mouths are some examples.
These areas definitely do have bass in them, but the bass are probably very spread out, so it isn’t efficient to fish a ned rig, drop shot, or other very slow techniques.
You definitely will get bites with slow moving baits, but it will take very long to stumble on those bass when you aren’t covering water.
And in very cold winter waters, bass don’t want to chase loud, aggressive baits like crankbaits or chatterbaits all the time.
Finesse swimbaits on the other hand are very subtle and are a very easy meal even for lethargic winter bass.
Being able to cover lots of water with a finesse presentation is killer in cold water.
When it comes to rigging, I am going to leave the Umbrella rig out of this discussion.
In my view, the Umbrella rig is something completely different and is certainly not finesse.
So while it does utilize swimbaits, the Umbrella rig is a different conversation completely.
But I do have two favorite rigging techniques for winter finesse swimbait fishing.
The classic jig head rigging setup will always be my favorite. It is the most simple, natural, and easy to fish rigging style.
Just take your favorite jig head and thread the swimbait on there. That’s it.
I like to aid on the side of lighter rather than heavier with my jig heads so that I am forced to slow my retrieve down a bit.
But if you are fishing deep water, you will still need to use fairly heavy jigheads.
The jighead setup is not weedless or snagless at all so don’t try to fish it around much cover.
But like we discussed earlier, the real reason that you are using the finesse swimbait in the winter time is to cover lots of water, not pick apart isolated cover, so that isn’t a downside at all.
The underspin has gotten very popular, especially on the tournament scene.
The small blade adds a bit of extra drawing power while still giving a small, finesse profile.
There are certain days where I can’t get a bite on the plain swimbait, so I tie on an underspin and immediately start smacking them.
Something about that extra flash of metal seems to get cold water bass fired up and more willing to react even in very cold water.
There are a ton of different underspins out there, but I prefer to use small ones so that I can keep my setup very finesse and still throw the underspin on spinning gear.
The Great Lakes Finesse Sneaky Underspin is my favorite underspin for the winter months.
The vast majority of my retrieve during the winter is just a slow and steady reel.
This goes for both the classic jighead and the underspin setups.
Every 10-15 ft I’ll give my rod tip a small jerk to make the swimbait jump a little bit, but most of the time it’s just slow and steady.
I try to keep the swimbait about a foot off of the bottom throughout the whole retrieve.
Some guys bottom hop their swimbaits or Yo-Yo them in cold water, but I have found that there are better lures and techniques for those retrieve styles than the swimbait.
So I pretty much stick to the slow roll all the time.
For me, this is exclusively a spinning gear technique. I like a 7′-7’2″ medium power spinning rod with 8-10 lb line.
My mainline is usually a 15 lb braided line with the 8-10 lb line being a fluorocarbon leader.
You definitely don’t need to buy a whole new setup for this technique because it’s about as simple as it gets and you undoubtedly already have a spinning setup similar to what I described.
Finding fish in the winter time can be very tough. Especially because most winter techniques are very slow moving.
But finesse swimbaits give you both finesse and efficiency which makes it one of my top techniques throughout the entire winter season.
Bass can never seem to say “no” to a little finesse swimbait that comes near them and they are certainly an essential soft plastic to have in your bag.
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