What color swimbait should you choose?

Across the nation bass feed on a variety of prey species. Swimbait manufactures were quick to pick up on this and produce baits to match nearly any forage available to bass. On a typical store shelf you can find swimbaits that match everything from a rat, to a trout, to a goby. Without direction your only real option is to buy them all and see what works for you.
The good news is I already did the hard work for you! Over the last 10 years I’ve purchased nearly every swimbait to hit the market (with few exceptions) and have tried them in a dizzying array of colors. I’ve compiled all of that information into this quick video. I don’t cover every bait but I have a few quick tips that will help you select the right color for your situation.
You don’t need box after box of swimbaits, stick to the basics and you’ll do just fine. In fact, you’ll usually do better than the guy who spends all day digging through his boxes looking for the “magic” bait.

What swimbait colors do you have confidence in? Have your best days been on the realistic colors of some of the more extreme options? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Which swimbait should you choose?

Has anyone else noticed that there are 10 or 20 times the number of swimbaits on the market today than there were 5 years ago? Some of the biggest “brand name” baits in the industry have only existed for a year or two.  What is an angler to do? You can buy every last one of them in order to see which ones consistently catch fish and which ones don’t but then there is no money left to put in the gas tank. A boat full of baits and no where to go sure won’t help you get bit!  At the request of several anglers I put this video together to shed a little light on which baits work. Forget the hype, forget all the talk about which bait is better. I’m sharing with you a handful of the baits that consistently help me put big fish in the boat, in every season of the year. These aren’t the only baits I use but these are the baits that are widely available and that I firmly believe will get bit coast to coast, day in and day out.

Has this been your experience? Are you one of those guys that lives and dies with a hardbait in your hand? Feel free to leave a comment and let me hear your thoughts. I don’t claim to be the best or to know it all but these are the baits I love to fish. If you take the knowledge in this video and apply it to your time on the water, big things are sure to come.

Wakebaits and Jigs

“Junk Fishing” is a term often used to describe a day spent on the water in which the fish were caught on a wide variety of lures or techniques with little rhyme or reason to seasonal or daily patterns. Junk fishing allows an angler to adapt to the surroundings instead of trying to force the fish to eat a certain lure. While I go into every trip with some sort of game plan the majority of my outings turn into a junk fishing day.

The exception to this rule is the night bite. I have confidence in a few key techniques and tend to use them exclusively to find fish in the dark. This night, however, was much different. We arrived at the lake with the intention of throwing wakebaits from sundown to sunrise. After a few hours and only one wakebait bite we began using other techniques. By the end of the evening our 5 best fish were caught on five completely different baits! It just goes to show you, even at night, the best policy is to adapt until you find the fish. Our five biggest bites came on 1) MS Slammer Wakebait, 2) Homemade Swimbait, 3) Zoom Brush hog w/ 3/8 oz weight , 4) Dirty Jigs 1/2 oz Flippin’ Jig and Uncle Josh pork Chunk, and 5) 6″ Yamamoto Senko.

Don’t be afraid to change it up! You just never know what you might catch.

Wakebaits in Winter

How many times have you heard that there is a certain water temperature when the topwater bite starts and that its a waste of time to throw topwater in the dead of winter? I for one do not agree! I’m a firm believer in throwing topwater year round, especially on a warm winter afternoon. This isn’t a giant fish by any stretch of the imagination but this 3 lb spot did step up and eat a 10″ JSJ Wakebait in February!