It’s no longer the talk of the tackle world, but the umbrella rig remains the hottest rig going for bass during the cold-water months.
Baits and rigs come and go.
A flashy new lure floods the market during the bloom of popularity. A few years later, it suffers the fate of fashion, tucked away in a forgotten bait tray.
Such seems the fate of the umbrella rig to many bass anglers who invested heavily in these odd-looking contraptions during the multi-rig heyday but seldom give them a second thought today.
Not so for Tennessee River guide and bass pro Jimmy Mason, who has never confused fashion with effectiveness.
Late fall, when the mats on grass lakes begin breaking up, is prime time call up big bass with a frog. Read on for expert advice on frog fishing from a veteran bass guide.
“You saw where that was, right?” Jimmy Mason asked, as he reeled his frog quickly away from where a bass had just blasted through the milfoil but missed his bait. “Cast right into the blowhole.”
I followed instructions and happily hit the mark because the bass slurped down my frog almost before it landed. I set the hook hard and then reeled steadily to get the fish turned my way before it dug any deeper in the thick stuff. Soon after I was lip landing 3 1/2 pounds of Lake Guntersville largemouth and another pound or two of vegetation. We kept working the same area and caught three more solid frog bass before returning to search mode.
There are few ways to catch bass that are more fun than casting a BOOYAH Pad Crasher across big mats of vegetation and prompting bass to bust through the grass. Anticipation stays high, especially on a lake like Guntersville, where you know that any bass that explodes on your frog could be a legitimate heavyweight.
Learn winning swim jig strategies for autumn bass fishing from two anglers who have been swimming jigs for many years.
Fall is generally a disjointed time, with bait schools on the move and bass hot on their heels. Action can occur just about anywhere, so anglers need a bait that goes just about anywhere. For such autumn diversity, it’s hard to beat a BOOYAH Mobster swim jig.
“It’s always on my deck because I’m going to throw it around any piece of wood, any dock, any piece of cover that I think the fish may be relating to,” said Oklahoma pro Brent Haggard. “It’s such a huge part of fall fishing, I always have several tied on.”
Chad Warner, Director of Product Development for BOOYAH Bait Company agrees and notes that the swim jig easily earns a spot in his top five fall offerings.
Learn about the Heddon Super Spook Boyo and the important niches it fills for topwater fishing action from many species of gamefish.
“That’s the new Boyo,” said Micah Frazier, a Bassmaster Elite Series pro from Newnan Georgia, as he swung a topwater-caught bass into the boat. It was a cool autumn morning, and we’d been throwing subsurface lures. Frazier had spotted some minnow movement at that surface, prompting him to pick up his Super Spook Boyo rod.
The Super Spook Boyo, new from Heddon Lures, offers elements of new and old. It’s a new size of Super Spook that fills an important niche for many different types of fishing in both freshwater and saltwater settings. However, it uses the time-proven Heddon Spook design and is easy to walk and effective for calling fish to the surface.
With a dozen or so other lure models already in the Heddon Spook family, it almost doesn’t seem like there could have been a place for another Spook. However, the immediate popularity of the Boyo and the ongoing flow of success stories from all over the country leave zero doubt that need for this particular Spook existed.
Don’t get in a rut with swimbait presentations. Utilizing various rigs and techniques can help you catch fish in a vast range of situations.
The YUM Pulse has emerged as one of the most popular swimbaits on the planet for bass. That should be no surprise. Its slender, natural baitfish profile screams “easy meal,” while a subtle roll and pulsing tail combine for an action that’s undeniably enticing. Add a ribbed body to push extra water and hook slot to ensure straight rigging and maximize hook-up percentages, and the Pulse has much in its favor.
The YUM Pulse comes in two sizes, 3.5 and 4.5 inches, and a broad range of colors, making it an excellent fit for many situations. It is also diverse in the ways it can be fished. Anglers too often typecast baits, treating any given one as a one-trick (or maybe, two-trick) pony. To do that with the Pulse is a major mistake because this bait is exceptionally effective when presented with several types of rigs. We’ll look at five of the best.
Even with a common bill shape, different crankbaits have distinctive characteristics. We’ll look at six top square bill crankbaits and the best applications for each.
Not all square bill crankbaits are created equal.
That’s important to keep in mind when you are choosing a lure to tie on this time of year. We’re not talking about performance quality or durability (although those are important considerations). We’re talking about variances in shape, sound, size, swimming action and more that cause different lures in the same category to excel in different situations.
When we speak of square bills, we’re talking about shallow running crankbaits with diving bills that are flat in the front and that have corners, instead of being rounded in front and on the sides. As a category, square bills are considered the best crankbaits for working through shallow cover.
Enjoy the benefit of Jason Christie’s expertise and tap into the season’s best bass fishing action.
Late fall can be a very fun time to fish for bass, with the fish often eager to feed as they prepare for leaner times. It’s also a season of major transition, though, and quickly changing weather and water conditions trigger changes in bass behavior.
Having the right assortment of late fall bass baits at hand can be critical to finding the best fishing action any given day. With that in mind, we decided to leave nothing to chance. We tapped into the expertise of Jason Christie and got his top late fall bass bait selections, specific to size and color.
Making a good thing even better, we’re going to give you 15 percent off Jason Christie’s featured late fall bass baits. See below for details.
Schooling fish in the early Fall can be a huge kick in the pants to most anglers because of their tendency to turn their noses up to any and all baits you toss out.
This can all change with the help of a little old springtime hero known as the soft plastic jerk bait! My favorite is the YUM Houdini Shad, and we will go into greater detail about why further in the blog.
Fishing a Biffle Bug on a HardHead is a year-round strategy for Tommy Biffle and a critical part of his gameplan. We talked with Biffle about the technique he developed in 2010 and has been refining ever since.
“Maybe I should have thrown this in that tournament,” Tommy Biffle said to me as he unhooked the fourth bass he had caught in as many casts with a Biffle Bug on a prototype swiveling jighead that he had never thrown before. He had shown me the design a few minutes earlier and mentioned that he’d had one rigged at Smith Mountain Lake, where the Bassmaster Tour had just been, but hadn’t picked it up. He’d instead been flipping and pitching Texas-rigged Biffle Bugs and had finished solidly in the money but not in contention to win.
Less than two months after that day with Biffle, in June 2010, he won the Bassmaster Elite Series Sooner Run on Fort Gibson Lake with the same combination and introduced the fishing world to the Gene Larew Biffle HardHead. Two weeks after that, he used the same approach to win a PAA event on Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake, cementing the HardHead/Biffle Bug combo’s place in the bass fishing scene.
For Biffle, this combination immediately became a mainstay in his overall approach, and that has never changed. In fact, its place has grown. He fishes this combination year ‘round in a huge range of situations for largemouths, smallmouths and spotted bass, from the Great Lakes to Florida and coast to coast. He always has at least one rigged. It’s usually on his front deck and often in his hand.
Wading a creek or river for bass and other species is a fun and highly effective way to catch fish during summer and autumn. Follow these tips to find great fishing adventures.
With only a couple of hours available, a buddy and I went for maximized efficiency. We parked my car near an Ozarks creek just before daylight and then rode in his truck to another access point, a mile or so downstream. We had tackle packed in light backpacks and topwater lures tied on, and as soon as we had enough light to see where we were walking, we moved streamside at the lower end of a long pool and eyed our first casts.
My Teeny Pop-R disturbed the slick surface first, and the first gentle pop prompted a not-so-gentle attack. The fish missed twice and didn’t come back, but we were underway. Two hours later, just in time to get to where we needed to go, we left fish biting and walked to my car, a few hundred feet away. We’d caught several smallmouths, a couple of spots and largemouths and a handful of mixed panfish. An amazing start to any day!
If you have wadable streams withing reasonable reach that offer public access and support a population of smallmouths, spots, largemouths, shoal bass or other black bass species, there are few simpler or more enjoyable ways to find fishing action than by wading-fishing with a light spinning outfit and modest arsenal of small lures. These tips can make your wade-fishing outings extra productive.
Bank fishing is one of the best American pastimes, but how do you get started and become successful with it?
It can be daunting finding quality spots and ever more difficult to arrange the best equipment for your fishing spots. Today I’m going to give three tips to amplify the decision-making process behind bank fishing to help you become more successful! These tips are choosing the right location, picking the right equipment to get the job done, and finally how to perfect the right presentation from the bank to be as stealthy as possible.
For help on this blog I also reached out to bank fishing guru, Ethan Butler. He is pictured above with a nice walleye he caught pond hopping right before his wedding!
Why guess at the best lures to use when you can call on the expertise of one of the world’s most accomplished bass anglers?
Early fall bass fishing presents challenges. The fish stay on the move and can be in many different types of areas. With changing conditions, they also can be a bit moody. That said, if you understand seasonal bass behavior and use lures and approaches that capitalize on that knowledge, fishing can be very good this time of year. With that in mind, we talked with Jason Christie and got his picks for the 10 best lures for early fall bass fishing.
