Date: Dec. 19, 2025
Venue: Lake Guntersville
Weather: Bluebird skies, 12 to 15 mph winds, high of 42 degrees
Pro: One of the original Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series pros, 56-year-old Gerald Swindle is a two-time Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year with more than $2.5 million in career earnings.
Gear: Minn Kota Ultrex QUEST, two Minn Kota Raptor shallow-water anchors and LakeMaster mapping, along with three 13-inch APEX units, one 12-inch XPLORE, MEGA 360 Imaging and MEGA Live 2 powered by Humminbird Imaging.
Ever wonder how a Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series pro breaks down tournament waters during pre-practice? What if those tournament waters are a stone’s throw from that pro’s backyard? There are mental gymnastics required when competing on your home body of water, and more times than not, the results end with a face-plant. So, we were curious how veteran pro and two-time Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year Gerald Swindle tackles this issue … plus how he tackles a grass lake in the winter. What he shares is not only a tremendous how-to guide for locating and catching grass bass in chilly climes, but also a lesson in how to quickly read the water for emerging patterns.
SIX HOURS LEFT
• 10:30 a.m. I meet Swindle at a public boat ramp near the middle of the lake. It’s cold and windy, nary a cloud in the sky. “Hey, let’s make a move,” Swindle says. Perhaps a “Day on the Lake” first, the Alabama pro makes a run before ever launching the boat. “Let’s go launch where we can be out of the wind. I’m old, and I don’t like cold.”
• 10:45 a.m. Swindle launches his Phoenix in a calm cove protected from the brisk north wind. “We don’t have a ton of time today, so we can quickly check out multiple patterns from here, without making long, cold runs.” He begins tying on Rapala hard baits: a DT6 crankbait, a PXR Mavrik jerkbait, a Glass Shad Rap (a plastic crankbait with internal rattle) and a Snare 50 lipless crankbait. Water temp is 49 degrees.
• 11 a.m. After a short run to a nearby cove, Swindle begins to idle, watching his APEX units while in Side Imaging mode. “This time of year, the combo of LakeMaster mapping and side scan can be the MVP of your day. I know, based on the 1-foot contours on the mapping, where the little ditches are that should hold fish. With the side scan, I’ll idle until I start seeing the grass edges and the holes in the grass. These holes are where the bass like to feed and ambush bait.”
• 11:10 a.m. Swindle finally sees what he is looking for. His Mercury is turned off, his Minn Kota Ultrex QUEST deployed. He starts casting the DT6 in the olive shiner color. His retrieve looks like he’s using a soft-plastic bait. “I use the MEGA 360 like a radar. It shows me precisely where the holes in the grass are … so I cast past the holes, slowly pull the bait to the opening, then let it dive down. When I contact the grass, I just pull it free. Unlike warmer months, you don’t want to snap the lure free of the grass — just pull it through. Bass are sluggish, like me. They won’t run it down like they do when it’s warm.”
• 11:15 a.m. Swindle swings. A nice bass attempts to jump out of the water. “The DT6 strikes!” Swindle exclaims. “That’s a good ’un,” he continues. His rod goes limp … the bass gets off. “Well, that was a good ’un. He was right in the middle of that pothole. I saw him on my 360, right where he was supposed to be. But, he wasn’t supposed to get off.”
FIVE HOURS LEFT
• 11:30 a.m. Swindle has continued targeting grass holes with little response. I notice there is a bit of a hitch in his giddy-up. “Yeah, I had my knee replaced six weeks ago. I asked the doc how bad it was. He said top three worst he’s seen in his career. It fell apart when he took it out. I said just wait until you see the other one.” He is getting his other knee replaced five days after this “Day on the Lake” takes place in hopes that he will be fully recovered once the Elites kick off for the 2026 season in February, with the first tourney scheduled to take place on the Big G. “Sucks getting old!” he says.
• 11:35 a.m. Swindle is back behind the wheel. “See those coots over there?” He points at a small island a couple hundred yards away with a swarm of birds floating around it. “Those coots eat milfoil and hydrilla. They don’t like eelgrass. We are looking for that combination of grass. It’s where the bass should be. Let’s go scan it to see if any fish are around.”
• 11:40 a.m. The coots are on the right kind of grass, but Swindle sees no bass. We keep moving.
• 11:50 a.m. Swindle stops at the mouth of a short cove. “I want to check out the hard spots on the sides of these little points. You’ll not see me fishing super deep, even though the water is cold. In grass lakes, you can fish shallow year-round. I’ll look on the LakeMaster for the deepest place in little pockets like this that have the right combination of shallow grass, where bass can move up a few feet to feed. I’m not going to worry about seeing bait. It will be in the grass.” Swindle worms the DT6 along the grass edges and through potholes. No takers.
• 12:05 p.m. Swindle swings his DT6 in the boat and grabs a pair of pliers. “My cricket needs a front-end alignment. She’s sliding a little to the left. When pulling through a lot of grass, your line tie can get a hair out of whack. So, tune it up if you need to.” He makes a short cast. The bait is running true. He makes another cast. “You need to stay patient when you are fishing in cold weather. You won’t usually find a big pack of bass. You’re not gonna catch 25 in 25 casts. I expect eight to 10 bites all day. And on Guntersville, your best five may be 28 pounds.”
• 12:20 p.m. Swindle has moved back to where he lost the first fish, wobbles to the front deck and puts the Ultrex in the water. “Let’s see what we can see with the MEGA Live 2.” He is using an XPLORE unit as his live screen. I ask him why. “Well, this XPLORE unit is like a Ferrari with a Tundra price tag. I don’t know what sort of magic elves they put inside this thing, but the processing speed is amazing. It never gets bogged down. Because of that, I use it solely for my MEGA Live 2 screen. And for the benefit of the recreational angler, it is preloaded with LakeMaster maps covering 13,000 lakes, which is huge.”
FOUR HOURS LEFT
• 12:30 p.m. Still looking at his live screen, Swindle taps a button on his QUEST foot pedal and both of his Minn Kota Raptors deploy. “Oooh. That’s what we are looking for. See this grass edge and that bass chilling near the bottom?” I do. He picks up his jerkbait rod and makes a cast with the Mavrik. The bait is easy to see as it approaches the fish. The bass rises, then sinks back to the bottom. He makes another cast. “She’s coming!” Until she’s not. The bass followed the bait for about 10 feet before disappearing in the grass. Another tap to the foot pedal and the Raptors are stowed. Swindle keeps trolling.
• 12:46 p.m. Swindle has made another move. He identified a juicy-looking saddle: a ditch running between a point and an island. His boat is now sitting in 12 feet of water. He’s casting to about 5 feet, where the grass becomes sparse. He picks up the Glass Shad Rap and makes a cast. “There he is!” Swindle’s rod bows to the weight of a nice fish, but it comes unbuttoned. “Son of a *$%^#. That was another good one.”
• 1:15 p.m. Swindle has slid around from the point and is fishing the bank, still casting the Glass Shad Rap. I ask him what his thoughts are on the day so far. “I tell you, there is nothing more important when fishing in cold weather than to remember exactly what you were doing when you got a bite. That last fish hit on a short pause, just like the first one. These fish are not aggressive. They’re lazier than that gal at the tollbooth who refuses to reach out for your money. We are gonna have to keep things slow. I’m going to keep my eye on this 360, looking for holes in the grass, then watch the reaction of these fish with my MEGA Live 2.”
THREE HOURS LEFT
• 1:34 p.m. Still casting the Glass Shad Rap, Swindle leans back, and his rod loads up. “Stay on there!” And it does. Swindle’s first keeper is a chunky 2-pounder. “Same deal. She ate it when I paused. I watched her follow for a couple seconds on the MEGA Live 2, so I stopped the retrieve and she ate it. Feels good to be on the board.”
• 1:50 p.m. Swindle switches back to the DT6, still casting along the grass edges of a steeper bank. We are now sitting in 12 feet. The grass grows out to 6 feet. I ask him what is most important to him when trying to break down a lake the size of Guntersville with limited time to practice. “This being my home lake, there’s a desire to fish history. But, with today’s equipment, I have more confidence in seeing what’s going on with my own eyes at any given moment. I don’t want this to sound like an ad, but the deal with Minn Kota is that everything works together to make it easy for rednecks like me to accumulate as much data as possible, as quickly as possible. The Ultrex, Raptors, screens and mapping — they all talk to each other and give me the information I need to make decisions very quickly. I don’t have to lean on history.”
• 2:03 p.m. Swindle has switched back to the jerkbait. He has found a bass hanging on the point of the submerged grass. He pinpoints his cast using MEGA Live 2, reels the bait down to the fish and kills it. “There he is, just like I planned it.” Swindle fights his second keeper to the boat. It weighs
1 pound.
• 2:20 p.m. Still methodically working the steep bank where his last keeper came from, Swindle picks up the jerkbait and slings it. Massive backlash. “I’m rusty. And I haven’t changed this string since last year’s
St. Lawrence River Elite. With this knee surgery, I’ve been sitting on the recliner eating Snickers, getting fat and forgetting how to cast.”
TWO HOURS LEFT
• 2:46 p.m. Swindle’s rod bows again. This time the bass swims straight into the grass and comes unbuttoned. “Seeing I’m treating this as a bit of pre-practice, I’m not gonna get mad about it. Actually, I’m pretty happy with how many bites I’ve gotten so far … and that the fish are where I like to catch them. If this were a derb, I’d be popping those Raptors down a whole lot more often, every time I got a bite, and milking the area.” But not now. He continues trolling down the bank.
• 3 p.m. Another first for a “Day on the Lake,” Swindle has to stop fishing to shoot some videos for Bassmaster LIVE, to be aired during the Guntersville Elite event. One of them focuses on the Minn Kota Ultrex QUEST. Afterward, he candidly says, “I’ll tell you something, I can break just about anything. That’s one of my superpowers. I have yet to break a dang Ultrex.”
ONE HOUR LEFT
• 4 p.m. Done with filming, back to fishing. Swindle only has 30 minutes left before it gets dark. “My shivers are starting to shiver,” he says, as the sun is getting lower and the temperature is dropping. “Still, I’d rather fish the last two hours of a cold day than the first two. Even if there’s just a few degrees rise in air temperature, the fish can feel it and will get more active.”
• 4:02 p.m. On cue, another bass bites the Glass Shad Rap but shakes free. “A smarter man would have sharpened them hooks after the third one got off.” He makes another cast without sharpening the hooks.
• 4:05 p.m. We watch another bass follow the Glass Shad Rap on the MEGA Live 2. It’s another noncommit.
• 4:20 p.m. Back to the jerkbait. “When I fish a jerkbait in winter, I think the most important part of the presentation is the pause. Plus, instead of chopping it, I do more of a pull. This is where MEGA Live is so critical. You can see how those fish react to your presentation, and you can change it until you get a bite.”
• 4:30 p.m. Swindle has run out of time on Lake Guntersville. The sun is setting, and it is getting cold. He ends his half-day with six bites and two keepers weighing 3 pounds.
THE DAY IN PERSPECTIVE
“Knowing that we were out here to find a viable pattern for an upcoming tournament, I was less concerned with boating a limit than I was with establishing a pattern that would give me a chance at cashing a check,” Swindle said back at the ramp. “Mission accomplished, in my mind. I got good bites on three different banks that had similar features. If the tournament was tomorrow, I’d start on those grasslines on the steeper banks and wear them out with the crankbaits and a jerkbait, slowing down to focus on holes in the grass when I found them.”
Editor’s Note: This story was created prior to the launch of Minn Kota’s new trolling motor and fish finder products and the announcement that Humminbird will transition under the Minn Kota brand. Anglers with current Minn Kota and Humminbird products can access performance enhancements through the latest software updates.
