Bass Fishing Tips

Tap into the expertise of a veteran Maine outfitter and learn how to increase your success catching smallmouth bass.

“Only 99 more,” Doug Teel half-jokingly said as we released the first smallmouth bass of an afternoon. I’d spent enough time on the Penobscot River with Teel to know 100 smallmouths in a half-day outing would be a reasonable notion, so it became the goal without further discussion, and we counted down, with every smallmouth landed. The fish were still biting well when the count hit zero, and we had plenty more time we could have fished. However, we set down our rods, content with 100 even, and headed for dinner.

Teel operates Northridge Outfitters, a full-service outfitter in Maine, and turns his focus primarily to the Penobscot River’s fabulous smallmouth bass fishery through the summer. He has been fishing the river for decades and has an astounding understanding of river smallmouth behavior and how to tap into the best action.

We talked with Teel to glean his expertise and compiled six top tips that will help you catch more river smallmouth bass.

The Carolina rig is highly effective for catching bass in a broad range of situations. Here’s what you need to know for Carolina rigging.

Jimmy Mason doesn’t fish the same areas across the calendar, and his bait selection certainly varies by season. However, there is one bass fishing rig he knows he can count on every month of the year — the Carolina rig.

“It works year ‘round, and I always have a minimum of two in the rod locker,” the Pickwick/Guntersville guide and tournament pro said. “This is a very versatile rig that can serve many purposes.”

Noting that he’ll vary his Carolina rig action with different styles of baits for active and lethargic periods, Mason summarizes his seasonal preferences.

As hot as the summer sun can be, the crankbait bite can be even hotter given the right conditions! In today’s blog we will go over three tips for summer crankbait fishing to help you find fish, pick out the right plug, and stay on a school of fish for as long as possible.

Wisconsin smallmouth specialist Bill Schultz shares countless hours of learning about the lure that has produced more than 6,000 smallies for him.

In 1992 I bought my first Rebel Teeny Wee-Crawfish to fish bluegills and largemouth bass in a pond. I still remember my first cast with this little fish-catching magnet. I caught two bluegills, and I knew I had a winner. 

It wasn’t until August 4, 1994 that I gave it a try for stream smallmouth bass, and since that day it has been one of my “go to” lures for river smallies. It’s possible that I have fished this lure for smallies as much as anyone in the country. Since catching my first smallmouth bass in May of 1994, I’ve caught and released 24,700, with more than 13,000 coming from my river outings. Conservatively, I’ve caught more than 6,000 smallmouth bass on the Rebel Teeny Wee-Crawfish!

Learn the best baits and presentations for calling bass from different types of vegetation.

Green vegetation in bass waters creates habitat-rich environments, which creates a common problem for bass fishermen: It all looks fishy. Rather than being overwhelmed by all the visible possibilities, anglers do well to learn to identify those areas with the highest probability of producing bass. Part of the solution is learning to accurately cast the appropriate lures to the vegetation that is most apt to produce a strike.

There are four major types of aquatic vegetation: floating, submerged, emergent and algae.  Let’s look at several specific varieties and examine how to go about fishing them.

Topwater lures come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and actions – so how as a typical fisherman do you know which one to grab for certain situations? Quick answer is you probably don’t, you just tie on the most reliable option you must save time and energy. Topwater fishing has been my Rubik’s cube for many years and I have developed a simple three step approach to identify the perfect lure for your situation. The three steps are extremely simple and can just about be identified at the boat ramp; they consist of water clarity, wind, and type of baitfish.

Learn about Chris Jones’ long-time secret weapon, its doubly important Bassmaster Classic role, and its virtues for pulling bass from shallow cover.

The only bad part about a “secret weapon” lure is that eventually the secret gets out. Ask Oklahoma bass pro Chris Jones. He watched that happen with his favorite lure – a swim jig now known as the Mobster and soon available from BOOYAH Bait Company – when he used it to win a 2020 Bassmaster Central Open on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma and then rode it to a third-place finish in the 2021 Bassmaster Classic last week on Lake Ray Roberts in Texas.

The Open win, which qualified Jones for this year’s Classic, coupled with Jones’ Classic success, brought national attention to jig that Jones has been winning tournaments with for the better part of two decades.

The bass jig – the manliest form of bass fishing out there. It seems after every tournament when anglers gather round to share their near misses that anyone who threw a jig sticks their chest out as they describe the harrowing details, even if they didn’t land in check range! But why is this? I attribute the testosterone boost of throwing a jig to the mental toughness it takes to fish slowly and the destructive hook sets you get to lay to a bass. Add in the ability to land above average bass and its quite easy to see why so many anglers are drawn to the legendary lure known as the jig.

But what is a jig? I mean, there are so many options out there that say bass jig on the package so where do you even begin?

Well for starters a bass jig is any lead head lure with a hook and a plastic keeper. Typically, they sport a fine silicone skirt in various colors and a weed guard protruding from the head to keep the lure from snagging cover. The jig can have several different head designs, but I like to classify them all in a few categories like football, casting, flipping, finesse, and swimming.

Basically, all a jig needs to do is slip through the desired cover you are fishing efficiently and show off the plastic it is carrying. Jigs get bit the most when they are subtle and lifelike.

To be the most efficient we are going to break down the cover often fished and choose which heads to use in that type of cover.

Square-bills excel at calling bass out of shallow cover of many types. Learn how to maximize production with these outstanding bass lures.

The square-bill is a work of art when properly presented. Fat and wobbly on a steady retrieve and rolling off any cover it hits, it’s visually appealing to the angler if visible in clear water. More importantly, it is visually appealing to bass of all sizes in clear, stained or muddy water.

Perhaps in the early days of angling with artificial lures, someone carved a bait that resembled a square-bill crankbait. It presumably would’ve had a metal lip attached.

Fred Young created what became the Big O crankbait in the 1960s at his home in East Tennessee. That famous hand-carved balsa wood bait was light, buoyant and had a unique wiggle-wobble anglers and fish loved. Young’s creations spawned generations of bass anglers and a new method of fishing. Crankbaits were already popular, but Young’s bait, manufactured from plastic by Cotton Cordell, gave new life for anglers fishing around shallow wood and rock cover.