Thanks for the insight

Now

52

Depends on the lake. Spent all day one Jan on Fork in 15-25' to go shallow and start catching them on a spinnerbait in 4 feet of water the same day. The water temp had warmed from 48 to 52 in two days. Don't just assume because the water temp dropped from 60 to 55 that all the fish went deep and automatically into winter mode.

The primary baitfish in most of our NTX lakes is threadfin shad. They will start migrating deeper as the surface temp drops into the 50's but they don't start dying until the temp drops down into the 40's. That's when the deep jigging spoon bite usually gets good as the shad start dying and doing their little death dance making them easy pickings for the bass.

Forgot to mention that Gary Klein won a WON Bass event on Lake Havasu years ago in 48 degree water on a buzzbait. The water had warmed rapidly and caused the bass to suspend up near the surface on a late winter day. Everybody else was split-shotting in 30 feet.

Once the turnover is complete and the shad start moving out of the creeks and back out to the deeper water in the main lake. Every lake is different. It's already started on some lakes.

It's not so much a specific temp, in smaller lakes that didn't have much of a thermocline the transition is probably already done.

It’s very lake dependent. If the lake has good shallow grass and other cover, plenty of bass stay shallow