Not long after he won the 2014 Bassmaster Classic on Lake Guntersville, Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series pro Randy Howell and his wife, Robin, moved their family to the shores of the famous north Alabama impoundment permanently. The lake, consistently ranked among the best bass fisheries in America, offered Howell the opportunity to continually hone his skills and expand his knowledge of bass behavior on an almost daily basis.
The “almost daily” part occurred each year during the winter months when the bass fishing predictably became far more difficult. It took him a full decade — until a cold, brutal day on the water during the winter of 2024-2025 — to realize what he and many other anglers had been completely overlooking.
“For years, we all thought bass wintered on deep, vertical-type cover like bluffs, flooded timber and deep brushpiles,” Howell says. “They became extremely lethargic and usually didn’t bite well, so we just fished slow and deep. Everybody had the same bag of tricks, too.”…