Featured Stories

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!

A jigging spoon fills a critical niche in any angler’s tackle selection. Learn how to best use these highly versatile lures.

Simple and Versatile: those two words describe Cotton Cordell’s CC Spoon to a T.

This venerable lure consists of nothing more than a piece of hammered metal with a rustproof treble hook at one end and a metal loop at the other end. It comes in just two colors—silver and gold—and four sizes—1 1/2, 2, 2 1/8 or 3 inches. Despite having only basic options when selecting a CC Spoon, the angler who drops one of these often-overlooked lures into the strike zone might hook up with anything from panfish such as white bass or crappie to high-jumping black bass or trout to pole-bending saltwater species that could range from sheepshead and redfish to sharks and tuna.

The War Eagle Jigging Spoon offers similar functionality. However, different shaping alters the profile and wobble. It comes in two sizes – 1/2 and 7/8 ounce – and seven colors and comes equipped with a swivel.

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 the benefits of Fish Handling Gloves for conservation and safety and how to maximize those benefits.

“Net?” I asked, as my 15-year-old son Nathaniel gained control of a good trout and worked it close.

“I’ll use the glove,” he said, as he held the line tight with his rod and used his other hand to pull a Lindy Fish Handling Glove from his back pocket.

Well-rehearsed from many previous fish, Nathaniel slid his hand into the glove, maneuvered the fish to good angle and then stabbed like a heron nabbing a baitfish to grab the trout by the base of the tail. He then set down his rod, slid his rod hand under the trout’s belly, showed the fish to me, removed a barbless single hook and let the trout go, having never taken it out of the water.

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 “brown bass”, formally known as the smallmouth bass is one of the greatest natural resources, we have swimming in the waters across our country. Even more special is the fact that this hard-fighting species roams abundantly in the smallest creeks and streams offering excellent wade fishing adventures for anyone who seeks! Finding and catching them though can be a task worth researching though, because smallmouth aren’t everywhere in creeks and won’t bite just any particular lure. A sense of stealth needs to be implied and some fishing skill must be put forth.  I’m going to give you a three-part system in this blog to hopefully provide enough information for you to be successful and have some lasting fun this summer wading creeks for smallmouth bass.

What you need to know about the Texas impoundment that will host the 2021 Bassmaster Classic.

When March 11-13 sees the 51st Bassmaster Classic unfolding on Lake Ray Roberts, the fishing world will get its first major look at a lesser-known East Texas fishery. That is no slight to this timber-strewn reservoir that is located just north of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. After all, the lake record of 15.18 pounds screams quality. We simply haven’t had much opportunity to get to know the fishery.

Classic qualifier Stetson Blaylock said the Classic practice would be his first look at Ray Roberts. The Arkansas pro arrived with a reasonable level of background knowledge, based on internet and map study, but Blaylock said he’ll be learning this one as he goes.

“This time of year, the challenge is figuring out if you can win on the bank or do you almost have to be out where the majority of fish are going to be living,” Blaylock said. “From what I understand, this lake doesn’t have a lot of shallow structure. To me, that means you have a Texas lake without a lot of vegetation, so those fish are going to be on something — more than likely offshore.”

Learn the Secrets to a highly productive and often-overlooked crappie fishing technique.

The current obsession of sniping crappie by using LiveScope has opened the door for anglers without live sonar technology to the technique of dock shooting. Truth is, you would be hard pressed to find any tournament crappie angler shooting docks on most lakes.

That’s a mistake, according to Weiss Lake crappie fishing guide Lee Pitts. “Seems like tournament anglers have forgotten that lots of crappie, along with big crappie, live under docks,” Pitts said.

Unlike video game fishing, dock shooting requires eye-hand coordination to skip or shoot a lightweight lure in and around boat docks, boat lifts and in stalls. Let’s look at this unique, ultra-productive technique for catching crappie.