Bass Fishing Tips

We’ve gleaned expertise from Jason Christie’s many years of refining spinnerbait knowledge to provide you a shortcut to spinnerbait fishing success.

Enjoying consistent success with a spinnerbait for bass is so much more than casting and retrieving. For Bassmaster Elite Series Pro Jason Christie, there is a right time and place for fishing a spinnerbait, and there are several variables to consider when selecting the right spinnerbait. Christie is considered one of the best spinnerbait anglers on the planet, having earned countless dollars in tournament winnings a spinnerbait on the end of his line. Let’s dive into his recipe for success fishing a spinnerbait for bass!

Bait School Bite Spec

Lure: Bandit 100 – Baby Shad

When: Fall, Spring, Summer

Where: Highland reservoirs, river systems, natural lakes (Table Rock Lake, Arkansas River, Mille Lacs)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.