Trailers on jigs and spinnerbaits can attract bass in cold water, but they can also turn them off. Most of the time, you don’t want a quick-moving trailer in cold water; you want to match what they’re eating, and chances are that’s not moving very fast.

With jigs, I go to a crawfish trailer almost exclusively in the winter because most of the fish are on the bottom eating crawfish. If I’m fishing spinnerbaits, I use one of three different trailers. If bass are going after shad in a pretty aggressive manner, I put on a Ringworm, which has a short, quick tail and looks just like a small shad when I’m retrieving the spinnerbait fairly fast. If I’m slow-rolling a spinnerbait, I go to a ribbontail because it’s more of a rippling, slow-motion type of trailer. Finally, if the water is really cold and the bass are inactive, I use a twin-tail with either straight tails or hula grub-type swimming tails. I want it bulky enough to slow down the spinnerbait’s fall when I’m slow-rolling it or yo-yoing it up and down. I want to make it as easy as possible for the bass to catch up with it.

Pick natural colors: crawfish for jigs and some kind of shad for spinnerbait trailers. As a general rule, the colder the water gets, the slower you need to fish. Use trailers that are subdued and natural.

— Chevy pro Dion Hibdon of Stover, Mo.