Fished in water 46 to 48 degrees fishing 5 inch swimbait yesterday. Dragged it using rod tip as slow as you can go, no twitching just dragging. For the first couple of hours from 10:00 to noon each bite was vicious and the bass were hitting bait as I slowly dragged it across bottom, would pause and just as I started to pull bait again, the strike would occur. Not lifting bait off bottom, just resuming slow crawl. I think that was just as important as the speed. No sudden movements to scare fish. Never during the day did I get bit any other way. When the bite slowed I tried different retrieves, tried different baits... nothing. Went back to slowly dragging swimbait like before and noticed the bite was still going on, but that the fish were taking it much more subtly. There was never any line twitch that I could see, only less or more "weight" in bait. Swung on what I knew was a different feel and hooked up. From that point on I was setting the hook on everything that didn't feel like what I was expecting. At the end of the day I must have had 15 bites... probably more until I knew what to look for. Had one fish that I set hook on and it was like I didn't have a bait tied on, knew he was moving towards me... try to reel in all slack and set hook again... nothing. Fish dropped bait almost dead under my kayak. Later on I threw a willow leaf spinner bait to see if they were biting it and dragged it the same way. I swear the fish picked bait up laying flat on the bottom.. Only landed 5 bass, broke one off, got hung up and lost a good one. Stumps, reeds, pad stems.. the fish were up against it. Didn't expect such a fun day having experienced a skunking the day before in similar conditions. What I also did differently was use an anchor... no way to fish that slowly being pushed by the wind, from a kayak. Anyway, I learn something every time out and most of its when I'm paying attention.
This was what was working for me. 5” Fringe Tackle Swim bait on 5/0 Owner Flashy Swimmer under spin. It was the very last one I had and couldn’t believe it was still in one piece at the end of the day.
Last cast of the day.