Lipless crankbaits are handy to have in the tackle box when you're searching for bass that might be holding in fairly deep water. Photo by John Felsher.

Cold weather may not the best time of the year to catch a huge number of quality largemouth bass in South Carolina. However, midwinter fishing on the right lakes in South Carolina can give knowledgeable anglers the chance to catch several quality fish on any given day. That is exactly what occurred to a buddy and me on a trip to Lake Hartwell on a cold mid-January day. The keys to success this day were having patience in our approach to locating fish and to focus on the right depth and lure patterns. The fish action was not fast-paced, but by day's end, it had been a very good day.

It had been a couple of years since I'd fished for largemouths at Lake Hartwell during the cold months of the year. But I did have my map and knew I could find the places where I'd been successful before during this same time of the year.

With all the attention Lake Hartwell has been getting from the black bass tournament fishing world, I was ready to try it again.

What I did not count on was the lake level being significantly lower than what I had experienced previously. In fact, the level was low enough that some of the places I had caught a couple of fish on the previous trip were now literally high and dry. But I did see the cover that was holding the fish that day. I marked that on my map for a future high-water-level fishing trip.

On this day it was as if I was learning the lake again, but I did have a couple of things going for me. I did remember the types of places and depths where we'd caught fish previously. Plus, I remembered the tactics. Put those two things together and it should spell fish success.

And to a reasonable extent it did.

Figuring the right depth and type of structure is the key for largemouth fishing on almost any lake. At Lake Hartwell, sometimes you do have to factor in the lake level -- at Hartwell, the need to do this can be more pronounced than at most other bass lakes. With the drought we've experienced, the lake can fluctuate a great deal. But by looking for moderately sloped mud and rock banks near deep water, we were able to catch a number of quality largemouths on one of my all-time favorite cold-weather baits, the jig-and-pig combo.

Points and offshore humps were other productive patterns we fished on the previous trip. Points were not too hard to figure out and we did finally find a couple that produced some largemouths. While motoring around keeping one eye on the graph, we spotted a couple of humps that turned out to be productive. On both of these humps, we vertically jigged spoons and caught a few hybrids along with the largemouths.

The bottom line is that there's some very good fishing to be enjoyed at Lake Hartwell during this cold weather (and coldwater) time of the year.

Hartwell anglers are not alone in this: Both lakes Greenwood and Murray will produce quality fishing during January as well.