NEW Colors for YUM Lizards

The YUM 6-inch Lizard, a go-to lure for many bass anglers, just got even better with the release of six new custom soft plastic lure colors. Learn about the new offerings and how to use a YUM Lizard to catch more bass.

You know that kid on a Little League team who never draws attention or acts like a superstar, yet always seems to get a hit when it’s needed and fields the ball cleanly? That’s the YUM 6-inch Lizard. Seldom called out on a tournament stage and certainly not the hot new lure, the YUM Lizard quietly get the job done. It’s an old faithful in countless bass anglers’ boxes that produces great bass fishing action in a broad range of situations and was part of the original YUM catalog.

The very good news, if you’re a YUM Lizard fan (or a bass angler who needs to discover or re-discover lizard!) is that the YUM Lizard’s perennial productivity and fanbase have not gone unnoticed. YUM has just added six outstanding colors to the selection for the 6-inch Lizard, and those colors are available now on Lurenet!

Five of the new colors come from the YUM Custom Colors line-up for YUM Dingers. The other is a classic YUM Color that truthfully should have been part of the YUM Lizard offerings long ago. Collectively, these colors fill a broad range of bass fishing needs.

New Lizard Colors

Before breaking down the new colors, it is worth noting that the existing YUM Lizard color line-up, although not super extensive, is extremely on-target for bass fishing. It includes critical colors like Green Pumpkin, Watermelon/Red Flake and Junebug, plus a few other watermelon and pumpkin variations. While existing colors provide a great baseline, the new colors create outstanding options for far more situations, making a YUM Lizard even more useful.

Looking at the new Lizard colors, we’ll start with the one that preceded other YUM Custom Colors and has long been a favorite YUM color in the Dinger and other baits. Watermelon Pearl Laminate is a two-toned bait, with an opaque watermelon back and creamy pearl underside. Those tones match many kinds of natural forage, including some salamanders, and simply make a lure look like dinner.

As the name says, Junebug Red Flake is the Junebug you know and love for dark-colored water and dark places, but with a generous dose or red flake to reflect light and trigger strikes.

GB Haze is a clear-water special that’s unlike anything else in the YUM Lizard line-up. Black and light blue flake set in a highly natural base emits a unique hazy look and prompts strikes from fussy fish.

Dirt Purple, a color brought to YUM by bass pro Stetson Blaylock is green pumpkin on top and brown on the bottom, with purple and light green flakes. It provides good visibility in stain but has a strikingly natural look for clear water. It’s arguably the best color in the line-up for matching common salamanders.

Mud Fleck, which falls somewhere between cinnamon and black, with a healthy dose of blue flake, provides an excellent option for fishing stained water. It’s also perfect for working brushpiles at night, which, by the way, is an outstanding time to fish a lizard!

Finally, Pumpkin Groove is a light green pumpkin with plenty of flash from orange flake, creating an outstanding option for moderately clear water to modest stain and nicely suggesting crawfish colors.

Lizard Fishing

Soft-plastic lizards are best known as spring bass fishing baits because salamanders are known egg nabbers, and bass fiercely guard beds against anything that threatens their eggs. This remains a great application, but to limit lizard fishing to sight fishing or even to spring is a monstrous oversight. A YUM Lizard looks critterish – like food to a bass. It’s like a plastic worm, except with two sets of curly legs that come to life anytime the bait moves forward, is lifted or falls through the water column.

The most popular way to rig a YUM Lizard is with a simple Texas rig, with the amount of weight required varying dramatically based on the setting and intended technique. Using a light bullet weight – 1/16 ounce or so – allows you to swim a lizard through shallow vegetation or to work it slowly and make subtle presentations in shallow water. At the opposite end of the spectrum, using a 3/4- or even 1-ounce weight allows you to punch a lizard through mats or pads or to pitch or flip to wood cover. Most presentations fall in-between, with 1/4- or 3/8-ounce weights being the most common.

A YUM Lizard is also exceptionally well suited for a Carlina rig. The curly legs and ribbon-style tail add visibility and strike-enticing action as the bait glides along just up from the bottom. The legs also slow a lizard’s fall just enough to keep it from sinking out of the strike zone when paused. A Carolina rig is ideal for covering water yet keeping the presentation slow to find fish, especially when they are spread along the tops of point and on flats, often just outside of spawning flats through the spring. The same approach shines through the summer, when many bass move to ledges and other offshore structural features, such as humps.

Rigging a YUM Lizard on a jighead, with an open hook, and hopping or dragging it down slopes is an outstanding approach for working banks that don’t have a lot of weeds or wood cover and is especially good for rip rap, chunk rock banks and transition banks at the ends of bluffs.

A final highly productive and largely overlooked way to fish a YUM Lizard is to rig it on a Gene Larew Biffle Hardhead and use Tommy Biffle’s signature presentation for a Biffle Bug. Cast, let the rig sink and then reel steadily, moving it as quickly as you can without losing contact with the bottom. This approach is outstanding for covering a lot of water and is especially effective over hard bottoms.