Swimbaits Part 3: Where to Fish

By now you’ve made the decision to bring one rod on your next trip to the lake, you’ve chosen your bait and you know when to fish. The odds are beginning to lean in your favor of catching a bass on a swimbait. The next step is to focus in on where to throw the bait once you arrive. The lake is vast and the options are endless. There are points, humps, ridges, ledges, coves, inlets, outflows, foundations, trees, brush, and grass lines. What do you do?
Get a map out of your favorite lake. Remove all your mental blocks that currently determine where you should and should not fish. Look at the map with a new perspective and then watch this video.

Targeting trophy bass is really quite simple. Catching them can be another matter but knowing where they live is not that difficult. These bass are the masters of their domain. The choose the best spots with the easiest access to food and they typically roam very little. Once you have located the fish in your lake it will just be a matter of putting in the time to catch them.
I hope you’ve found this video helpful and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Swimbaits part 2: When to Fish

While you may be the exception to the rule, most anglers don’t get a single bite on their first outing with big baits. After surviving a day of drudgery (let’s face it, those first days are tough) a plethora of new questions have probably arisen. Most of those question revolve around doubt and fear that you’re doing it wrong.
Chief among the questions of doubt is whether you’re even fishing when the bass are biting. Let’s get this one out of the way as quickly as possible. First off, there is never a wrong time to throw a swimbait. That said, there are certain times when the odds of you being successful are much higher than other times.

My suggestion to you is to pay attention to the little details as you continue on your journey. Each fish you catch can be a memory soon forgotten or provide you with tidbits and clues that will lead to future success. The difference is simply whether or not you choose to pay attention.
I recommend you begin logging your significant catches. Don’t spend hours journaling but jotting a few lines about a successful (or brutally tough) day can provide insights down the road. You will begin to see patterns develop and soon you will see when the best times to fish your local fisheries really are.

Swimbaits Part 1: Getting Started

For some anglers swimbaits are nothing new but for many, its still a mystery. Sure, if you live near a trout-infested Southern California fishery you have been seeing swimbaits fly for 20+ years. What about the guy in Arkansas or Tennessee, in some of these places the bass have yet to see a single swimbait. For years anglers have believed that swimbaits simply wouldn’t work in their local lakes.
Using such a big bait was surely reserved for Texas, California, or Mexico. Time (and tournament results) are quickly proving that this simply isn’t true.
For those of you who still have yet to see great success with a swimbait these next few videos are for you. We’re going to take it from the ground up. This first video discusses the mindset you will need and the equipment you should take out on your first day. For step 1 (getting the bait in the water and gaining some confidence) I really don’t recommend buying new equipment. Use what you currently have available to you for the time being.

As this week rolls on check the website regularly for the next few videos in the series. I’ll be discussing where to fish, when to fish, and how to take care of the fish once you get them in your hands.
There are still a handful of videos to be filmed in this series so if you have questions that you would like addressed please offer your suggestions. Afterall, the purpose of this site is to answer YOUR questions and to help YOU catch more and bigger bass on your next trip to the lake.

Winter Swimbait Retrieves

So you’ve decided its finally time to throw a swimbait. You head to your local lake and begin casting the bait around your favorite haunts. You visit a point or two, that break you caught those jig fish on last week, but its been 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 3… make that 4 seconds and you STILL haven’t had a bite!
In the back of your mind you start wondering if you’re doing it right. Maybe you have the wrong bait, Maybe the fish moved, maybe the fish in this lake don’t eat swimbaits, WRONG!
Odds are you simply aren’t fishing the bait slow enough. Welcome to December! If you want to throw a swimbait in December (and you should) there are two kinds of retrieves. The first retrieve is slow, the second is so slow it hurts.

Big bass are inherently lazy. (Thus the belly that helps them get above the 10 lb mark) In most cases they aren’t out roaming around hunting food, least of all in the Winter months. If you want to play the odds go back through the places you just fished and start slowing down. You may be surprised by what happens next!