Cold weather means one thing to many anglers—stripers. In lakes throughout the South, East and Midwest, striped bass are actively roaming open water in search of baitfish like shad and herring. One of the best ways to catch stripers is to cast and retrieve a bucktail jig.
A bucktail is nothing more than a lead-head jig with a clutch of deer hair tied around the collar of the jig head. The hair is usually just long enough to cover the hook, but some anglers prefer to custom-tie their own jigs, giving their lures longer or shorter hair, depending on little more than their own preference.
A plain bucktail will catch stripers just as it is, but most hardcore striper anglers dress their jigs up with some sort of trailer. A white curl-tail grub, a soft-plastic shad or just a white plastic worm can add a little extra action to an otherwise lifeless lure. A trailer can also change the profile of the bait and it can help a heavy jig fall a little slower, giving stripers an extra second or two to chase the bait and grab it. What you put on yours is perhaps less important than where you throw it and how you retrieve it back to your boat.
Winter stripers in lakes throughout the South and Southeast follow baitfish, feeding heavily on shad and herring throughout the day. In other words, if you want to find stripers now, just look for schools of baitfish on your boat’s depth finder. Striped bass won’t always be directly under those schools of bait, but there’s a good chance they’ll be in the neighborhood. In many cases, so will largemouths. That’s an added bonus of winter striper fishing. The two species often follow the same patterns in the winter and both willingly eat a bucktail jig, so there’s no telling which one will be on the end of your line when you set the hook.
Once you find the bait, start casting to it. There’s a good chance stripers will be under or near schools of shad, so let the lure fall through the bait and then start bringing it back to the boat with a steady lift-drop retrieve. Make sure you stay in contact with your lure—stripers and largemouths often hit it as it falls, and they don’t always slam it hard.
If casting into schools of bait doesn’t produce, start working points, drop-offs and humps in the same areas, but focus on points and ledges near main creek or river channels. Inactive stripers and bass will hold on those spots, and while they aren’t necessarily in the mood to chase bait, they are often happy to grab what seems like a quick and easy meal. Just cast towards shore and allow your lure to fall a few feet before you begin working it back to the boat. Of course, you don’t want to let it hit bottom; adjust your retrieve so the bucktail stays up in the water column. Give it a swimming motion by raising and lowering your rod tip as you reel, keeping the bait close to the bottom but not directly on it.
During low-light conditions, both stripers and largemouths could be in just a few feet of water. Don’t hesitate to put your lure right on the bank, but don’t skip deeper water, either. The most active fish will usually be in six to 10 feet of water, but this time of year, they could be anywhere.
