Category Archives: Bass Fishing

Bass Fishing Information

How Long Should I Use A Spinnerbait Before It May Break On A Fish?

Fishing was fantastic one weekend several years ago – if you could find water that was clearer than a dirt road. I fished at Eufaula on Saturday and Bartlett’s Ferry on Sunday. The results were very different.

At Eufaula, the creeks upriver were clearing and bass and crappie were feeding. Bass were hitting spinnerbaits on shallow grass and wood cover. Hybrids were running in the river. I saw a fishermen in a boat anchored in the mouth of Uchee Creek reeling in a hybrid as I went out at 9:30 am. When I returned at 4:45, someone in that same boat was reeling in another one.

Bartlett’s was tougher. I could not find any decent water anywhere. The lake was muddy and the creeks too stained to fish. Fifteen Flint River Bass Club members practiced casting for 8 1/2 hours and managed to bring in 16 bass weighing 21 pounds.

New member Shane Graham, in his second tournament, won with three bass weighing 3-10. He caught them on worms. I got desperate after lunch since I had not caught a fish and started throwing a spinnerbait at everything I could see. I had one strike and caught a 3-6 bass that won second and big fish. Ricky Skipper, another new member, caught three at 3-4 for third and old member Tom Perdue caught 2 at 2-5 for fourth.

I was fishing by myself and when I got my fish to the boat, the net was tangled in another rod. Rather than waste time, I lifted the fish over the side with the rod. As it cleared the water, it fell, hitting the side of the boat and going into the boat. When I got it, my spinnerbait had broken just above the hook.

A professional fisherman who makes his own spinnerbaits once told me to quit using a spinnerbait after catching three bass on it. I think I will remember his advice from now on. If my bass had gone back into the lake, I would have been sick!

Catching Spotted Bass On Lake Lanier In November

Lake Lanier was the site for the November Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament a few years ago. Nine of us fished for eight hours and caught 19 bass weighing 31 pounds,15 ounces. That is a good average size for any lake and it is even better if you know most of the bass we caught were spotted bass. They tend to be smaller and lighter than largemouth.

James Pilgrim, Jr. had a limit of 5 keepers that weighed 9-2 for first. He had one of the prettiest spots I have ever seen, a 4 pound, 4 ounce fish that took big fish honors. Kwong Yu also had a limit and his 7-7 weight was good for second place. David Pilgrim had 4 keepers weighing 6-0 for third.

I caught only two spots but they weighed 5-8 and that was good for fourth place. I caught one on a jig and pig at 8:00 am and the other on the same bait at 2:00 pm. Both were on rocky points. My big one weighing 3-8 was the biggest spotted bass I have ever caught, but it wasn’t quite big enough!

James, David and Kwong said they caught their fish on worms in fairly deep water. They were fishing brush piles 20 to 30 feet deep. I am always amazed how deep the fish hold at Lanier. The shad I saw on my depthfinder were all 35 to 40 feet deep and other fish were holding under them. I caught a couple of little hybrids jigging a spoon in 40 feet of water.

I never fish that deep on other lakes. I guess it is the clear water at Lanier. If you try Lanier anytime soon, plan of fishing deep water. Jigging spoons are a good way to fish that deep.

The pro fishermen found similar conditions at Lake Russell that year. They also caught fish deep. The winner jigged spoons and slow rolled a spinnerbait through standing timber in 30 feet of water. Russell also has very clear water. Remember, the clearer the water, the deeper the bass will usually hold.

Stanford Lures Cedar Shad Crankbait

In an earlier article I mentioned a plug bass pro Bobby Padgett uses to catch fish on the ledges at Eufaula. A company in Columbus, Stanford Lures, is making the Cedar Shad. They also make the Hog Caller spinnerbait you see in local stores sold by another company.

The Cedar Shad is carved out of Western Cedar, runs about 10 to 12 feet deep and has excellent colors. It is guaranteed to run true right out of the box. Most crankbaits need tuning before they will run right but the Cedar Shad doesn’t. I expect this company to sell a lot of quality lures that are made in our state.

Crankbaits are excellent lures year round. Bobby Padgett’s favorite time to use them is May through the fall when the bass are stacked up on ledges and deep structure. He says his type fishing is feast or famine, catching either dozens of good bass or nothing.

I really like crankbaits this time of year. I am usually looking to catch one or two fish, just to place in a club tournament. Crankbaits fished slowly around rock or wood cover in shallow water will usually pay off in a few strikes even on the worst days.

Its tough deciding whether to go fishing or hunting this weekend. Doe days are open in Spalding County and other counties toward Atlanta. Other counties do not have doe days until Thanksgiving, but bucks should still be moving. I need a couple of deer for the freezer, but catching bass sounds good, too. This is a great time of year!

Fishing Lake Eufaula with Bobby Padgett

I had the chance to fish Lake Eufaula a few years ago with Bobby Padgett. He knows the lake well since he grew up in Columbus and still lives there, fishing Eufaula about twice a week. He won a BASS tournament there in May, 1996, bringing 15 bass weighing 77 pounds, 9 ounces to the scales. That weight set a new record for a three day, five fish limit tournament.

My trip with Bobby was to mark ten places to fish for bass in December for a Georgia Outdoor News article. It was unbelievable the way he found fish. We could be riding down the lake and he would slow down, circle an area, throw out a marker and say cast there. We would be so far from the bank you could not have hit it with a rifle shot! Sure enough, we would catch fish.

Bobby fishes the ledges on Eufaula with Mann’s 20 Plus crankbaits and Cedar Shad crankbaits. We were fishing ledges that were shallow even though in the middle of the lake or its major creeks. When we cranked the plug down and hit bottom in about 12 to 15 feet of water, and then bumped a stump or brush, a bass would often grab the plug.

Although we did not catch any bass over 5 pounds and Bobby said it was a bad day, I was amazed. Fishing only half a day, we probably caught 30 bass, and had about ten 16 inch keepers. Several of them weighed better than three pounds.

According to Bobby, there are more 16 and 17 inch bass in Eufaula than he has ever seen before. He had been catching at least 25 keepers each trip, and had several over five pounds each time before I went with him. I can bring bad luck to anyone! He was nice enough to blame it on the cloudy weather rather than me.

You can catch bass like that at Eufaula now. Find shallow ledges on a lake map and crank a plug down to hit them. Concentrate on brush if you find any. The bass will also hit worms and jigs, but a crankbait allows you to cover more area quickly.

There were big bass there last week. As I said, if it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all. Late in the afternoon, I cranked my 20 Plus down and hit brush. A bass grabbed it and, when I set the hook, it pulled my rod tip to the water. I had just caught a three pounder that did not pull my rod tip down at all. Bobby said I had a grown one. About the time I agreed, the fish pulled off.

A little later I was cranking a Mann’s Loudmouth on a more shallow hump. It stopped like it hit a stump and when I set the hook, a bass almost pulled the rod out of my hand. It also pulled off after a few seconds. I was using heavy equipment with 20 pound line, and Bobby said I was tearing the hooks out of the mouth of the big bass. He uses 12 pound Stren Easy Cast line on all his reels. I guess I should have changed to lighter line after losing the first one.

In the BASS tournament, Bobby landed one weighing 10-1 for big fish. He caught it on a deer hair jig. He caught a couple on that jig while I was with him. He showed me a way to fish jigs that I will have to learn. It is different from the way I fish now but it definitely works.

Bobby finds a fairly smooth point or ledge, casts the jig out and lets it sink on a tight line. When it hits bottom, he holds his rod tip at about a 10:00 angle and cranks the reel handle two or three times to swim it off the bottom, then lets the jig sink back on a tight line. The rod is at the right angle to set the hook if a bass hits. He does not pump the rod tip.

The jig looks like a shad swimming up and then darting down to the bass holding off the bottom. You have to set the hook hard and fast when one hits. This method also works with a Mann’s George-N-Shad. Bobby gave me one to use, showed me how and I quickly missed several strikes. I do plan to learn this new method!

Can I Catch Bass On An Ice Fishing Jig In the Summer?

Ice-Fishing Bait Helps Palaniuk To Top-10 Finish In Bassmaster Tourney
from The Fishing Wire

Brandon Palaniuk

After grabbing an early lead in a Bassmaster tournament last month, Brandon Palaniuk told the media he was keeping details of his tackle and tactics “locked down for now.” It’s time to bust out the key and set his secret free. In the heat of the summer he caught ’em on an ice-fishing bait – a Rapala Jigging Rap®.

“It’s a little trick up my sleeve that I’ve kept secret for a long time,” says Palaniuk, the only Bassmaster Elite Series pro from Idaho. “Before I made the Elites, I had thrown them a little at home. I’ve caught open-water fish on them all the way down to 70, 80 feet.”

When fished through the ice as they were designed for, Jigging Raps work best with a vertical pump-and-swim action. A successful open-water presentation, however, requires aggressive rod snaps throughout a horizontal retrieve.

“When you snap the rod, it will dart a foot or two off to the right, and then it falls super fast,” Palaniuk explains. “And then you snap it again and it might dart two feet back over to the left – or forwards, or backwards. It’s a constant change of direction.”

After weighing a 20-pound-plus five-fish limit to lead the first day of the Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on New York’s Lake Cayuga in late August, Palaniuk told Bassmaster.com he was fishing a pattern he had all to himself. It’s likely those Empire State bass hadn’t seen anything like a Jigging Rap before – at least not in the summer.

Lead weighted and balanced to perfection, Jigging Raps inimitably simulate the erratic characteristics of a wounded baitfish. “The big thing is how erratic it is,” Palaniuk says. “For fish that are in a negative, inactive mood, it triggers a feeding response.”

The Jigging Rap’s unmistakable minnow profile features single reversed hooks on the nose and rear – so regardless of how a fish attacks, it’s running smack-dab into a hook. A center treble hook – hung from a belly eyelet – further increases your hook-up ratio.

Fishing much deeper than most other competitors on Cayuga, Palaniuk saw only one other angler during the tournament. Targeting smallmouth, he ended up catching both brown and green bass off of two small rock piles in about 25 feet of water. A shell bed extended from the rock pile area down to about 40 feet. “The fish would stay anywhere from that 25-foot to that 40-foot zone,” he says.

Palaniuk found fish in those spots in the two-and-a-half days of practice before the four-day tournament began. Despite being able to see them clearly on his depthfinder, however, he couldn’t get them to bite at first.

“There were schools of these fish, so I’d drop on them with a drop shot and they’d follow it down,” he recalls. “But I wouldn’t be able to get them to eat.”

But on the last day of practice, inspiration struck.

“I pulled out the Jigging Rap to try to get a reaction strike,” he says. “The first drop with it, I had one eat it.”

It was a No. 7 size Jigging Rap in the Glow color pattern – white with a chartreuse head. He threw it on a 7-foot, medium-action spinning rod spooled up with 8-pound-test braided line attached to an 8-foot, 8-pound-test fluorocarbon leader.

“That first drop of the Jigging Rap, a couple followed it down, and the first few snaps of the rod, I got one to eat it,” Palaniuk says. “So then I kind of got excited. I was like, ‘Man, I’ve got something figured out that they’re going to eat!”

After dropping the Jigging Rap a few more times and shaking off a few more bites, he determined he’d found a school of 4-pounders.

“So, I just always had one tied up and on the deck throughout the tournament,” he says. “And when I would see fish on my electronics I would drop on them. If there were two or more fish, I’d drop on them like that and see if I could get bit.”

Ultimately, the Jigging Rap bite did not yield enough big fish for Palaniuk to win the tournament – he ended up placing eighth – but it did account for several of the fish he weighed and helped clue him into a couple other ways to get bites. Based on the way bass had been biting the Jigging Rap in practice, Palaniuk decided on the first day of the tournament to stroke a 1-ounce Terminator Football Jig, rather than crawl it across the bottom, a more traditional presentation. That decision led to a 20-pound, 1-ounce limit and the Day 1 lead.

“The reason I started stroking it was because of the fact that I got on the Jigging Rap bite,” he explains. “I just started ripping it off the bottom, like you would a Jigging Rap, and that’s pretty much how I caught 20 pounds pretty quick.”

Most of the bass Palaniuk caught on the Terminator Football Jig hit on the fall immediately after a vertical stroke. “You’d rip it up and I think you’d catch their attention, and they’d follow it up, and then instantly, if you’d let off at all, they ate it,” Palaniuk explains. “It’s almost like you’re fishing a spoon. Once you rip it up off the bottom, they eat it as soon as it changes direction – starts to fall.”

Although many believed, going into the tournament, that shallow-grass largemouth would be the ticket to success on Cayuga, Palaniuk – true to form – opted to target deep-weedline smallies.

“I always like doing something different,” he explains. “I feel like that’s how you put yourself in contention to win and how you can separate yourself from everyone else – if you can find the quality fish doing something different, that not every else is doing. The reason I found those fish is because I was looking for smallmouth.”

As it turned out, however, he caught both smallmouth and largemouth from his deep spots. Brown and green bass were “pretty evenly mixed in the school,” he says.

Lightning and Fishing

I admit it, I am scared to death of lightening. When I was about eight years old some friends and I were “camping out” on the screened in back porch of my house. A bad thunderstorm hit in the middle of the night and I just knew I would be hit by a bolt of electricity. Since that night I get nervous when I hear thunder, even if far away.

Over the years I have had many bad experiences with thunderstorms while I was fishing. Once summer while fishing way up the river at Bartletts Ferry a powerful storm suddenly popped over the surrounding hills. The rain was torrential and lightening started cracking all around us.

There was little cover so I pulled the boat into a small creek where the overhanging trees should give me some protection. I sat there in the boat, using the trolling motor to keep the wind from blowing me back out in open water. After a few minutes I realized the boat was not being affected by the wind. The heavy rain had put so much water in the boat it was sitting on the bottom.

That storm lasted over two hours. When it finally stopped it took a long time for the bilge pump to get enough water out of the boat to make it float again.

One August I was at Jackson Lake practicing for a night tournament. The afternoon had been very hot and muggy, with thick clouds overhead but no thunder, rain or wind. Just as it got dark I was fishing beside the dam when suddenly wind started gusting over the dam and a crack of lightening direct overhead was the first sign of a storm.

Back then there was no barrel line at the dam so I pulled my boat up against the solid concrete wall. There was a metal rail on top of the dam, about 20 feet over my head, so I felt I had a lightening rod protecting me.

For over an hour I sat in the drivers seat of the boat with my head on my arms. The lightening flashes were so bright I could see the light even though my eyes were tightly shut and my arms covered them. My dog Merlin got under the console of the boat hiding from the downpour and loud cracks of lightening.

Those experiences and others make me now head for some kind of cover if the thunder is anywhere near me. And I have an app on my phone that shows weather radar, giving me a good idea how close the storm is to me.

Last Sunday at a tournament at Oconee thunder made me head for cover. I left a place in open water where I had just seen on my depth finder a brush pile covered with fish. I would not stop and fish it, it was way too far from cover.

In the Flint River Bass Club tournament last Sunday at Oconee, 13 members and guests fished our September tournament from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM. We brought in 16 bass over the 14 inch size limit weighing about 29 pounds. There were no limits and six people didn’t have a keeper after nine hours of casting.

Niles Murray won with four bass weighing 7.66 pounds, Chuck Croft was second with three at 6.08 pounds and his 3.38 pounder was big fish, Mindy Burns had three weighing 5.19 for third and my three weighing 4.62 gave me fourth place.

I knew fishing would be tough, but not that tough. I started fishing a spinner bait on seawalls, usually a good pattern before it gets very light this time of year, and caught a three pound channel cat at about 6:15. It gave me a good fight but it was not what I was hoping for.

At 6:30 I switched to a crankbait and caught a keeper bass off a seawall. That fired me up but after almost an hour of trying the crankbait, spinner bait, buzz bait and Pop-R I had not gotten another bite. Then I got an explosive hit on the Pop-R right on the seawall. The fish fought like a big one but it was another 15 inch largemouth. Two in the live well at 7:30.

From then to noon I tried everything I could think to fish. I kept throwing the topowater baits until the sun got on the water but never got another bite. Crankbaits and spinner baits didn’t work either, and the only hit I got on worms was a ten inch bass by a dock.

At noon thunder started rumbling off in the distance so I got nervous and kept looking at the clouds. At 1:00 I was fishing a point and the thunder was getting closer, so I decided to head near the ramp so I could get to the van quickly. As I left the point I saw a GPS waypoint way off the bank on the point and rode over it. That is when I saw the brush with fish on it but I would not stay out there and fish in the open water.

At 2:00 the thunder was still distant so I went back to the brush pile I had seen and quickly caught my biggest keeper at 2:15. Although I fished the brush until I had to go in that was it for me.

Sixteen Baits I Have to Have in My Tacklebox

After 40 years of bass club fishing you would think I would have culled down my tackle to some essentials. I have not been one to go wild over new lures for many years. I don’t rush out to buy something just because a big tournament was won with it. But I do usually have 16 rods on my deck ready to use in a tournament since I don’t like to stop and re-tie. If it is on my deck ready to use I am more likely to pick it up and give it a try.

Still, I often use only three or four rods in an eight hour tournament. If something works early I stick with it. And if fishing is tough, like it usually is for me, I cast my confidence baits over and over.

If I had to limit myself to only a couple of rods and a tackle box with 16 items in it, the following list is what I would carry. I have distilled all my baits to this list and this is what I carry if I don’t go in my boat. And the 16 rods on my deck are usually rigged with each of them, ready to use.

1. JJs Magic – I always dip the tails of my worms and trailers in Chartruese but red and blue allow you to change colors or highlight plastic baits quickly and the clear and all the colors add a strong garlic scent.

2. Bitsy Bug jigs – I have a box full of three sixteenths and one quarter jigs in both green pumpkin, for clear water and black and blue for stained water.

3. Zoom Creepy Crawler trailers – Green pumpkin for the brown jigs, blue for the black and blue jigs. And I always dip the tails in chartreuse JJs Magic in both colors

4. Spinnerbait – I like a three eights ounce bait with a gold willow leaf and a silver Colorado blade, with white and chartreuse skirt for all around fishing. But I also carry heavier baits for fishing deeper.

5 Rico –My go-to topwater bait is the small Rico – I think it is the best popper on the market.

6. Buzzbait – I keep a variety of one eight to half ounce buzzbaits in various colors for fishing topwater, especially when cover keeps me from throwing the Rico

7. Zoom Mag 2 worms – I fish the redbug color both Texas and Carolina rigged, depending on cover and depth

8. Owner hooks – Sharp and tough the 3/0 is the size I use for Trick and Mag 2 worms, and have some 1/0 if I got to a smaller worm

9. Sinkers – a variety of weights, from my usual 3/16hs for Texas rig to half ounce for
Carolina rigs to lighter and heavier for different conditions and depths

10. Deep running crankbaits – I like the Norman Little N for medium depth and the DD22N for deep dredging. Shad colors for clearer water, chartreuse and blue for stained

11. Jig head – shaky heads – One of my go-to baits when fishing is tough. I use a 3/16ths ounce most of the time but will tie on a 1/8th for fishing rocks and a slower fall

12. Trick worm – A floating white trick worm with a 3/0 hook will draw strikes when the fish are shallow and want a subtle, slow falling bait.

13. Netbait T-Max worms – A Bamabug color is almost always on my shaky heads, but I will go to a watermelon red in clear water

14. JIgging spoon = Jigging spoons will catch fish year round, not just in the winter. I got a 7.6 pounder in a July tournament at Oconee several years ago. I like a gold Hopkins Shorty for most of my jigging

15. Spro Popping Frog – for fishing heavy grass, a frog colored bait allows you to fish the heaviest cover

16. Senkos – Nothing beats the wiggle of a weightless Senko falling under a dock or around cover. I rig it wacky style if cover allows, or Texas style with a 3/0 hook. They skip under docks great, too.

All these baits work for me. What are your favorites?

Fishing A Tough August Night Tournament At West Point Lake

Last Saturday, night time was not necessarily the right time to catch bass at West Point. In the August Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament eight members fished for eight hours to land 14 bass weighing about 22 pounds. There were no five fish limits and two people didn’t catch a keeper.

Kwong Yu won with two bass weighing 6.55 pounds and his 3.51 pound largemouth was big fish. I was second with four spotted bass weighing 5.33 pounds, Raymond English had three at 3.76 pounds for third and Harvey Pilkenton had two weighing 2.67 for fourth,.

Kwong said just after dark, around 9:30 PM, he pulled up on a brush pile and caught his two fish on back to back casts. Both were nice largemouth, the only two weighed in. Fishing was that tough.

I started on a rock pile in about 12 feet of water where I have caught fish this summer and after about an hour I caught a barely 12 inch long spot and two short fish. I stayed there for another hour but got no more keepers.

I went and fished a couple more places without getting a bite then went back to the rock pile at dark and caught one more barely 12 inch keeper spot. After over an hour of fruitless casting I decided to head back closer to the ramp and stopped on a long point.

One of my first casts to it produced a skinny spot about 14 inches long. Then a little later I felt a tap, set the hook and a fish took off stripping drag. It rolled on the surface in the dark and from the sound I was sure I had a ten pounder, especially when it took of stripping more drag.

When I got it to the boat I was shocked to net a 2.57 pound spot. I just knew it was much bigger. All my fish hit a Mag 2 worm Texas rigged. Kwong said his two hit a jig and pig.

At least it was a little cooler when the sun set, so night time was the right time to be fishing, even if it was not necessarily the right time to be catching.
——-

Clarks Hill August Bass Tournament

I love Clarks Hill but it surely has not been very nice to me this year in tournaments. I grew up fishing the lake and still have a place there at Raysville Boat Club and thought I knew the lake well. Now I am not so sure.

Last April I struggled to catch fish in a Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament. This past week I spent four days there, going over on Wednesday to practice two days to try to figure out something for a two day Flint River Club tournament over the weekend.

Fishing is always tough in August, and I much prefer to fish at night for bass, but the tournament was during the hot, miserable days. Our tournament was originally scheduled for Lake Russell, where spotted bass and different kinds of cover and structure make it a better choice in August. But since some of the club members couldn’t find a place to stay that they liked it was changed to Clarks Hill.
To make matters worse we put in at Soap Creek Marina up the Savannah River arm of the lake. Although it is only 17 miles from my trailer at Raysville to Soap Creek Marina by road, it is a 40 mile boat ride, one way, by water. Almost all my fishing at Clarks Hill has been up the Little River arm near Raysville and I did not want to make the long run in the tournament.

On Thursday I put in at Soap Creek and fished a little and looked at a lot of places on my deptfinder. It was too hot to sit still very long but I hoped to find something that would give me confidence for the tournament. I didn’t. I never caught a fish, and the places I checked just didn’t look good.

The only thing I found at all was schools of bait and fish under the two bridges in Soap Creek. I like fishing bridges and riprap and that is often a good pattern this time of year, especially since you can sit in the shade and fish! But I didn’t get a bite the little time I spent trying them.

On Friday I decided to check some of my better places near the boat club. Although I tried deep brush piles and similar places where I have caught August bass in years past, the only fish I was able to catch was around the pilings on the bridge near my trailer. So I knew I would not make the long run.

In the tournament, 11 members fished 18 hours in two days to land 53 keepers weighing about 85 pounds. There were four five-fish limits during the two days and two fishermen didn’t land a keeper either day. It was as tough as I expected.

Chuck Croft had gone over on Thursday and fished with two local fishermen before the tournament, and he found a pattern that paid off. He was the only one to have a limit both days and he won with 15.14 pounds. His partner JJ Polak came in second with six bass weighing 14.84 pounds. Niles Murray found a big fish and came in third with six bass weighing 13.20 pounds and his 5.97 pounder was by far the biggest fish. My eight keepers in two days weighed 9.24 pounds for fourth.

Chuck and JJ caught their fish on topwater plugs in very shallow water, and they said that pattern worked all day, a big surprise to me. I never really checked shallow water after the sun got up, just knowing the fish would be deep. Shows how much I know.

I fished a couple of deep points but I spent most of both days around the two bridges. I went to the first one at 7:30 Saturday morning and landed three keepers on a topwater popper by 8:30. Then it got tough. I checked some other places but was back at the bridge by 1:30 and landed my fourth keeper. Then, with just an hour left to fish, I caught my two biggest fish. All the last three hit worms.

Sunday I went straight to the bridges and caught two before the sun got up. With about 30 minutes left to fish, around 1:30, I got my third keeper. I tried a lot of things around the bridges but most of them just didn’t work.

Saturday morning there was fisherman fishing live minnows under the first bridge I went to. I talked to him and he said he had caught a lot of fish during the night but they had quit biting when it got light. It was discouraging when he told me he had caught crappie, hybrids, catfish and gar, but no bass, even on live bait.

If you go to Clarks Hill right now take live minnows and fish under bridges at night if you want to catch something.

What Is Your Summer Go-To Bait?

Pros Throw Go-To Baits All Summer
from The Fishing Wire

If you could only fish a handful of baits this summer, what would they be? We asked Bassmaster pro Ott Defoe and walleye guide Tom Neustrom, neither of whom hesitated before rattling off a short list of go-to lures.

Rapala and VMC Lures make many go-to baits

Rapala and VMC offer an assortment of lures ideal for probing the depths during the heat of summer

A Freshwater Hall of Fame Legendary Guide, Neustrom primarily targets walleyes in Minnesota. His top summer baits are the Rapala Scatter Rap, Rapala Husky Jerk, VMC Moon Eye Jig and Rapala Glass Shad Rap.

The 2011 Bassmaster Rookie of the Year, DeFoe hails from rural Knoxville, Tennessee. As a Bassmaster Elite Series and Bassmaster Open tournament competitor, he targets bass all across the country. His top summer baits are a Rapala DT-10, Rapala DT-16, Terminator Pro Series Jig and a VMC Shaky Head Jig.

“With those four baits, man, you should be able to catch a fish anywhere you go,” DeFoe says.

Scatter Rap

Several baits in the Scatter Rap family are in Neustrom’s regular rotation. Built on classic Rapala balsa body shapes, Scatter Raps derive their name and signature sweeping action from an innovative, patent-pending, curved Scatter Lip™.

“I love the Scatter Rap,” Neustrom says. “It’s a great bait with great action, especially when you change the cadence on your retrieve, which changes the action of the bait.”

A Scatter Rap is often a go-to bait

The Scatter Rap Shad has a unique, erratic action, and dives 5 to 8 feet.

Featuring what’s best described as evasive action, baits in the Scatter Rap family perfectly mimic a spooked baitfish fleeing attack, moving from one side to the next, triggering reactive bites.

When Neustrom wants to get Scatter action deeper than a Scatter Rap Shad’s 5- to 8-foot diving depth, he’ll cast a Scatter Rap Countdown, which will sink to whatever depth he wants to fish it. To get it to depth, he simply counts it down, “just like the names says.”

“I like to count ‘one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two,’ and when it do that, I usually get about two- to two-and-a-half feet per ‘one-thousand,'” Neustrom explains. “If you get to ‘five-one-thousand,’ you’re usually down ten feet.”

Once he gets the Scatter Rap Countdown to the strike zone, he slow rolls it back to the boat. “Just lift your rod and reel, pull it back, lift it again, pull it back,” Neustrom explains. “That gives you that erratic action in deeper water.”

Husky Jerk

Neustrom is “really partial to Husky Jerks,” he says. “I’ve caught a lot of smallmouths and walleyes on that bait.”

A natural-looking minnow profile and neutral buoyancy make the Husky Jerk practically irresistible to gamefish. Intermittently pausing the bait on the retrieve is key.

“You just stop reeling that bait and just let it sit there for a couple seconds and then start to reel again,” Neustrom explains. “It’s a great triggering action.”

VMC Moon Eye Jig

When he’s vertical jigging or pitching for walleyes with live minnows, Neustrom will often thread them on a VMC Moon Eye Jig, which features a very effective bait-keeper. “That bait keeper will keep even live bait on the hook, even better than just a straight hook.”

Glass Shad Rap

When trolling for walleyes, Neustrom favors Shad Raps, Scatter Rap Shads and Glass Shad Raps. He ties on the latter in clear water and when he’s needs a little extra running depth.

“I seem to get a little bit better depth with the Glass Rap than a regular Shad Rap,” he says.

His go-to size is a No. 5, which will run 12 1/2 to 14 feet at 2 to 2.5 mph, with 105 feet of Sufix 832 Advanced Superline braid out. His favorite colors are Glass Blue Shad and Glass Perch.

“They just work really, really good in these northern-tier lakes,” he says. “They outproduce a lot of other baits.”

DT-10 and DT-16

Throughout the summer, you’ll find both Rapala DT-10’s and DT-16’s tied on rods on DeFoe’s boat deck.

“Any time the fish are out offshore on deeper structure, as they often are in the summer months, one of those two baits is going to reach the range those fish are in,” he says.

Terminator Pro Series Jig

Not all summer bass live deep. “There’s always fish that live shallow in the summer time,” DeFoe says. “Even when it’s very, very hot.”

Ott Defoe’s go-to bait

Elite Pro Ott DeFoe relies on a variety of lures to score despite hot weather.

Flipping a Terminator Pro Series Jig in shallow water is among DeFoe’s favorite ways to catch summer bass. “Those fish, when they want to bite something, a lot of times, they want a big meal,” he explains. “You can put a big trailer on the back of that jig to give you a large profile.”

Featuring a unique head design, the Terminator Pro Series Jig is much more versatile than most jigs – it’s not just for shallow presentations. “You can cast that jig deep too,” Defoe explains. “You can basically do anything you want to do with it.”

Custom jig-skirt colors, color-matched brush guards, a single rattle and a heavy VMC® Black Nickel hook further differentiate the Terminator Pro Series Jig from other cookie-cutter jigs that all pretty much look the same.

VMC Shaky Head

When the going gets tough, DeFoe’s going to break out the spinning tackle and toss a green-pumpkin finesse worm on a VMC Shaky Head Jig.

“When times are tough and you need to get a bite, you can tie on that combination and catch one,” he advises.

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