Tagged with 'bass fishing'

Do you ever wonder which crawfish-imitating soft plastic lure would work best for the way you want to fish? We’ll look at distinguishing features to help you make the best decision.

Bass love crawfish. This much we know. Crawfish provide important forage to all black bass species, and the craws’ locations and behavior dictate much about the bass’ locations and behavior.

Because crawfish offer such an important food source and because they use a broad range of habitats, countless lures are designed to match crawfish in their profile, action and/or color patterns. Interestingly, not all crawfish-imitating lures look alike. In fact, even if you take a single category, such as soft plastic crawfish-imitating lures, they take on a broad range of shapes. That’s because different crawfish lures are designed with different fishing situations in mind.

With so many excellent lure options, picking the best lure can be challenging. These five lures will handle a host of commons early season bass fishing situations.

Spring is a great time to be on the water fishing for bass, but in ways it almost seems too good. Every spot seems like it should hold fish, and many lures seem like they ought to produce. While just casting your favorite lure close to whatever looks good sometimes produces bass, the truth is that bass follow predictable patterns during early spring, and intentional consideration of those patterns can help you catch far more fish.

We talked with veteran bass angler and lure designer Frank Scalish about early spring strategies and the key lures that keep him catching bass from the time the fish start moving from winter holding areas until they are on their beds.

Learn why Bassmaster Elite Series pro Micah Frazier keeps a Devil’s Horse handy throughout spring and how he fishes this classic topwater lure.

If you think the Smithwick Devil’s Horse is a one-trick pony, listen to what Bassmaster Elite Series pro Micah Frazier has to say. In his view, this three-hook prop bait is a bona fide attention getter with broad bass fishing applications — particularly during the spawning season.

Effective at riling up big bass in all three stages of the spring ritual, the Devil’s Horse employs a bold, intrusive presence that quickly wears out its welcome. Far more flamboyant than a walking topwater, this bait’s drawing power and deal-closing potential is unquestionable.

Pre-spawn bass fishing approaches are pretty straightforward: Cover water and look for fish staging on docks, laydowns, rocky points, grass lines, etc. Once the spawn begins, the fish will move much shallower, and while sight fishing certainly plays a big role, it’s not the only game in town.

“In the springtime, this bait is one of the best ways to catch the big females without looking at them,” Frazier said. “A lot of times, if you can get that bait over a bed, or around a bed, a lot of times, the fish will bite it before you get up there and spook it. With a blade in the front and the back, it aggravates those big females into biting.”

Regarding locations, Frazier said, “When you’re in a spawning scenario, you want to throw that bait where you think there’s a high likelihood of there being a bed. If there’s a hole in the grass, a little protected pocket on the bank, or a laydown — just something where you think the odds are that there’s a bed.”

Learn the secret to catching pre-spawn bass in a broad range of situations.

Early spring can be a daunting time to catch a good limit of bass, but not if you implore the Bandit “system” of crankbaits to probe each section of the water column. The system I speak of is the Bandit 100, 200, and 300 Series crankbaits, which dive anywhere from 2 feet deep all the way out to 12 feet. By having all these models tied on, you have a sure-fire system to find bass in many different pre spawn zones.

In the article below we will go through the three major scenarios/water depths to target for early spring bass fishing so you’re completely in the know the next time you’re on the water.

Landlocked stripers can be a pretty difficult puzzle to figure out in the heart of winter, but if you play your cards right you can stumble on some of the most fun bites of the year! By play your cards right I mean chucking the YUM Flash Mob Jr as much as possible, it seems to put the best cards in your favor during the coldest times of year. It is certainly the large part of the how in how to catch the most stripers.

Most anglers luck into a striper every few trips while bass fishing in the winter, but you can increase those odds with a few helpful tips. These tips all have to do with location, proper equipment, and style of fishing.

See surface dimples, scattered splashes or water that appears dark in areas from hordes of baitfish swimming just beneath the surface? You could be close to tapping into excellent autumn fishing action.

Late in the summer, shad congregate in massive schools, and as summer begins giving way to autumn, those schools begin moving predictably into tributary arms of reservoirs and eventually onto shallow flats well up creek and river arms.

Not surprisingly, where thousands of shad gather, feeding bass are typically nearby. Although some fish will continue to relate to crawfish, bluegills or other forage and can be caught various ways, there is no more dependable way to find and catch bass this time of year than to locate shad schools and use lures that “match the hatch.”

Because the shad play such an important part during fall, it is prudent to spend time searching out the biggest baitfish concentrations before making a cast. A reservoir’s largest creek arms typically attract the biggest schools, which show up first near creek mouths and work their way back as the season progresses. Sometimes you need electronics to find the bait. Often, you will spot little rings on top when the shad roll or will see the shad themselves if they are high in the water column and the water is reasonably clear. Other times, bass pushing shad on the surface will give away the bait and the bass.

Norman lures’ newest crankbait, the Speed N, began proving its worth before it was even released, when limited-production samples produced top 5 finishes at the 2020 Bassmaster Classic for Stetson Blaylock and Micah Frazier.

Designed primarily for cold-water fishing, with a tight wiggle and unique “pitch and roll” action that triggers strikes and sheds vegetation as it swims through developing weed beds, the Speed N proved perfect for the pre-spawn set-up at the Classic, which was held in early March on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville.

This crankbait isn’t only for cold water, though.

Late summer offers definite challenges for bass fishermen because the bass don’t like the heat any more than most fishermen do, so they tend to lay low. Fish still must eat, though, and they certainly can be caught.

Long-time Tennessee guide Jim Duckworth, who has techniques to work well for every season and virtually every situation, likes a couple of specific crankbait approaches for bass fishing through the dog days. Maybe we should say, “dog mornings.” Duckworth gets on the water while it’s still dark this time of year to be set up in a high-percentage spot at daylight, and he seldom fishes past mid-morning in order to maximize productive time on the water.

Duckworth has learned that late in the summer quality bass tend to stack up on deep, main-lake points that are at the mouths of significant coves or creeks. He works these points with Bandit 200s and 300s fished on 8-pound test for maximized depth reach and vibration.

Duckworth will crank a point very thoroughly from the tip of the point to about 50 yards away on each side. “Work both sides twice, just in case you have to aggravate the fish into biting,” he said.

Duckworth also finds a lot of late summer bass over the second drop out from banks, with depths in the 10-to 15-foot range. For these fish, he uses an aggressive stop-and-go presentation. He cranks the lure quickly to max depth before pausing, and each pause is just long enough to allow the bait to start rising.

“Then I crank it into high gear for about five second, stop it again and repeat,” he said.

Both cranking strategies can work under any condition, but Duckworth finds the best late summer success under overcast skies and with stable water conditions.

Jim Duckworth suggests trying these dog days strategies to #LandItWithBandit.