Winter Presentations For Southern Rivers

Winter has arrived, yet in the South it’s still mild enough to keep fishing with the exception of maybe a week or two of an Arctic front.

- Jason Jackson

Air temperatures in West Virginia and Kentucky usually hang in the 30- to 50-degree range most afternoons and evenings. For anglers with the determination to keep going, the winter months can provide some of the best fishing and heaviest muskies of the year.

In this article I will discuss my top lures for winter river fishing and the reasons I choose them. My choices are dependent mostly on the conditions. Winter is our wet season and the rivers are generally flowing if not flooded.

While many anglers search for calm, “lazy” rivers to fish, I tend to go in the opposite direction and look for ones with more current. In my experience, lazy rivers usually result in lazy muskies in winter, yet whenever I’ve fished rivers with more flow and current, I have found much more active fish.

Fishing in current can be tricky, which brings me to my list of go-to baits with which I’ve had success.

1. Dive-And-Rise