It’s one of those tried-and-true adages of fishing: When the water is cold, slow down your presentation. It makes sense; fish are less active in colder water. If you fish your presentation too fast, fish don’t have time to react, or it may seem like too much work to them. Either way, the end result is that you don’t get bit.

Crank bait fishing and a slow presentation seem to be two things at opposite ends of the spectrum. However, in this article from Wired2Fish, Elite Series pro Brandon Palaniuk provides his top ten tips on how to make it work.

crankbaitsJust because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean you can’t use crankbaits to catch bass. We’re always told to slow our presentations down in cold weather and the versatility of crankbaits actually gives you that ability more so than most techniques.

Elite Series pro Brandon Palaniuk has a lot of success bassfishing with crankbaits throughout the winter months. Whether the fish are transitioning into or out of their wintertime patterns, this technique allows him to cover various water depths while specifically catering to the activity—or lack thereof—of big bass.

According to him, there are 10 easy things modifications you can do to drastically increase your coldwater cranking success.

Photos: Wired2Fish