Bass

Don’t put away those surface lures yet. When conditions are right, the lures can prove critical to late fall bass catching success.

Frog baits, which call up some of the most explosive action in bass fishing, come in a range of sizes and styles. Learn to choose the best frog for the day.

Sudden, violent surface strikes are the trademark of frog lure fishing and a major appeal of this style of fishing. As importantly, though, frogs are exceptionally productive and prompt outstanding bass action in broad range of situations from mid-summer all the way until the end of autumn.

Ongoing advancement of frog lures in recent years has added even more applications for tying on a frog. Looking at the BOOYAH Pad Crasher series, as an example, what began with a single, hollow-bodied frog now includes six different frog lures, each of which is available in broad range of colors.

Primary styles include the original Pad Crasher, the Poppin’ Pad Crasher, which has a cupped face that pops and spits, and the Toad Runner, which has spinning plastic tail that churns the water like a buzzbait. All three primary styles also come in a smaller Jr version.

Frank Scalish shares secrets from a lifetime of targeting smallmouth bass on the Great Lakes and large inland lakes.

When Frank Scalish competed on the Bassmaster Elite Series tour, he was known for his ability to catch smallmouth bass. He did especially well with this species on the Great Lakes and on large, inland, natural lakes, such as Lake Champlain. A lifetime resident of northern Ohio, Scalish has never lived more than a short cast from Lake Erie, one of the nation’s premier smallmouth fisheries.

He has fished Erie regularly throughout his adult life and has the equivalent of a PhD in finding and catching Erie smallmouth. He is especially erudite about how glaciers created the rocky bass habitat on the lake’s bottom. This knowledge has helped him catch big-water smallies wherever he casts for them in North America.

Learn how top swim jig anglers select trailers and how to swim a jig for bass and find great success.

Swimming a jig for bass is nothing new. Just ask Chris Jones.

“I started swimming a jig with my dad in the late 1980s and early ‘90s on Lake Fork,” said Jones, a pro angler who has racked up 28 Top 10 finishes in MLF competition. “Back then, the technique wasn’t lure specific. We just swam the jigs we had. We flipped to a bush or laydown, reeled it back…A fish would hit! We didn’t know we were ‘swimming a jig’ until later on.”

Times have changed, and so has the swim jig, today fashioned to function and epitomized in the BOOYAH Mobster Swim Jig.

The Disco Ball Pad Crasher offers plenty of flash and an outstanding shad imitation, filling an important niche for late spring, summer and fall bass fishing.

You’ve seen how a disco ball splashes color across a dance floor. The Disco Ball Pad Crasher does the same with reflected light and the lake bottom. Doing its enticing dance, this bait suggests a distressed shad scurrying across the surface and is too much for bass to resist.

Disco Ball does not look like a typical frog, yet it’s an outstanding fit for the BOOYAH Pad Crasher. Let’s examine why BOOYAH has introduced the Disco Ball color and how you can use it to catch more fish from now through the end of autumn.

Learning more about crawfish colors based on region, conditions and season can help you catch more bass.       

Former Bassmaster Elite Series pro Frank Scalish, who now designs baits for Norman Lures and other brands available on Lurenet.com, is fanatical about matching the hatch. An artist with an airbrush, the Ohioan obsesses over paint colors and schemes that precisely mimic whatever forage the bass favor. Scalish’s attention to every detail and deep experience make him the ideal Bass Fishing 101 instructor on the topic of crawfish colors.

When Scalish creates crawfish colors for crankbaits, he becomes especially dogmatic because he strives to replicate the various crayfish species in different regions of the country.

“Certain crayfish dominate in certain parts of the country,” Scalish said. “For example, crayfish in Texas and Louisiana are all variants of red. The rusty crayfish is native to the Ohio River Basin. It has rust or orange-colored makings on its sides. The rest of that craw is green pumpkin or an almost blackish green pumpkin.”

Spring awakens exciting topwater bass fishing opportunities, and a Pop-R is ideal for igniting the action in many situations.

Spring means different things to different people. Some think about baseball, azaleas blooming or the Masters. In the minds of many bass fishermen, springtime is Rebel Pop-R time.

Bassmaster Elite Series pro Stetson Blaylock is one such angler. He has fished a Rebel Pop-R during the pre-spawn and spawning periods for many years, and a few springs back a Pop-R delivered him 1^st and 2^nd place finishes in consecutive Elite Series events.

It’s not that a Rebel Pop-R doesn’t produce excellent action all summer and through the fall. It does. Spring has extra virtues that make it especially good, though, along with being the time when the Pop-R bite first heats up each year.

Learn when topwater bass fishing calls for a finesse approach and how to downsize effectively to catch more fish.

I’ve fished the Zara Puppy for many years. It stands as one of my favorite topwater bass fishing lures for catching smallmouths and spots from creeks and small rivers. I’ve rarely tied one on to target bass in large rivers or lakes, though, because the Pup lacks the weight to cast efficiently on the tackle I favor for those settings and because the hooks and hardware are a bit small for bigger bass.

I typically choose a Super Spook Jr when I want to walk the dog for bass with a finesse topwater lure in bigger water, and often the Junior size provides the perfect answer. At times, though, I’ve wished I’d had even more of a finesse topwater lure that still could be cast efficiently and that was made as tough as the Super Spook Jr.

Seemingly, I was not alone. The folks at Heddon Lures heard about the need for such a topwater bass fishing lure enough times over the years to put engineers to work designing a new Spook. The result was the creation of the Super Spook Boyo, which is only 3 inches long but is built tough like the other Super Spooks.

Spring can be an unpredictable time for bass fishing, but the big bass action can be outstanding. Here’s how to pick the proper crankbait to maximize your success.

Catching bass on crankbaits in spring is one of the most fun and successful techniques when fish are on the move. Whether bass are in transition to shallow water, amid the spawn, or hanging around cover to feed, throwing the best crankbaits for spring bass fishing will keep your line tight.

Crankbaits come in a variety of sizes and shapes to mimic baitfish, bluegills, perch and crayfish. The shape and size of the crankbait’s bill will help it stay shallow or dive to specific depths. The bill’s shape might also help it deflect more easily off wood or rock cover and may impart different action to the bait during the retrieve. A crankbait is designed with specific degrees of angle to the bill, body shape, position of the hooks, eye-screw and split ring for the line, and how water flows over it during the retrieve.