by Bruce Middleton, March 08, 2010

Why we choice the lures we do…

When it comes to choosing the right lure for the right time, the right situation and the right conditions for that set of circumstances you are in at that moment on a lake you’re at, you have to take in a lot of details. Probably one of the most important details other than depth is what the bass like to eat and what is available at that time of year in that lake you’re fishing. Now in most places the shad and its smaller cousin the threadfin would be the two species that would determine just how you would go about fishing for bass but up here in the Pacific Northwest we don’t have those bait fish. Actually we do have shad in the Columbia River but they are not related to these baitfish and are usually over 16 inches long and spend some time in saltwater before going up the river. Instead we have sculpin, bull heads, crappie, sunfish, bluegill, perch, rock bass and to some degree predator species like young pike, baby Musky, both large and small mouth bass fingerlings and Walleye fry. They also have bottom dwelling creatures like the Goby, crawfish and worms and surface items like insects, frogs, snakes, mice, ducklings and the like.

However, without the giant schools of shad and thread fins to gorge on the bass up here grow much slower. They don’t put on a pound or two a year and they don’t reach any size (say 3 or 4 pounds) until 6 or 7 years of age. Whereas in places that have warm water and these bait fish, they do grow a pound or more a year and at 5 or 6 years old may weigh in at 10 pounds. That is just about 1-1/4 pounds short of the Washington state record for a largemouth black bass. The good news to all this is that the bass up here in cold water, bass live almost twice as long as the same bass do in warm water, about 16-17 years. So this puts us on an even keel with those bass in the 6 to 9 pound range at old age but sadly that is as big as they will ever get up here with a few exceptions.

Now there are a lot of emphases on growing and gene splicing faster growing and more aggressive bass, but results and studies have shown that these bass don’t bite artificial lures very often. These hybrid bass prefer to feed at night and are seldom caught but when they are caught they are great fighters. So as a trial for breeding bigger and more aggressive bass goes, I think the effort has failed utterly.

I think a little money should be spent on producing a baitfish that can survive up here in cooler waters giving us a chance to become on par with the southern states as far as size and weight of the big bass go. For one, the Northern Golden Threadfin that lives in the Great Lakes could be introduced into our waters as baitfish. Another would be the blue Herring found in rivers in the Eastern states. These baitfish grow to about 4-6 inches and can survive in cold water that is even ice covered. They would obviously thrive up here in our waters that don’t get near that cold and in return they would give us baitfish to rival the southern counterpart, the shad. I wonder what it would take to get the
Washington State Dept of Fisheries to look into this possible bass baitfish trial program?

But until that happens we are stuck with the prey fish we have. Now blue gill and sunfish spawn just before bass do. Adults being larger that most bass can eat are pretty much safe from being eaten. Really big bass however can swallow anything that fits in its mouth and that would include these two adult fish. After these small fish hatch, for one or two years or so after the young are the in the eatable range for all sizes of bass. Crappie spawn before bass and again the adults have no fear of the bass. But unlike sunfish and bluegill the young don’t hang around in the shallows. They, like the adults are not shallow water oriented and spend a lot of time out in deep water suspended in unlikely places. Sculpins and rock bass also follow this pattern of being found on the bottom of the lake in odd places. Also sunfish are a direct cousin to the bass, and just before the bass spawn the sunfish spawn. The color chartreuse mimics the color of sunfish and that is why it is so popular a color for spinner baits and other lures. It is an interesting fact that only 10% of bass beds actually produce fingerlings. This is a sad fact but true. And out of those beds that do hatch, the surviving bass have a mortality rate of about 90%. So you can see that being on top of the food chain is not all that great.

Large mouth bass mainly eat crawfish and smaller fish including minnows, perch, blue gills, crappie, small baby bass and other types of fish that live in the same body of water that they do. Minnows they eat are usually 3-inches long or shorter and have a lot of green in their coloration. Silver is second main color along with black. A crank bait looks like a baitfish but there are alternatives that you can use in many situations. A Texas rigged big flipping tube in silver and black with long tentacles can be rigged weedless and swam. This rig is very effective and easy to use in heavy cover like the limbs of trees or brush piles without getting hung up unlike a crank bait would. Plus it can be swum at any depth and at any speed. You can even give it the all-important up and down action as you retrieve it to the boat. This yo-yo action adds tremendously to the appeal of the bait. Swim baits are also a great go to plastic for tough places to fish that really draw bass to them. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The new swim baits with a boot shaped tail are also becoming very, very popular ass they look like they really are swimming. They come in 4 to 6 inch sizes and are colored the same as most baitfish. These new swim baits are fast becoming the go to way to fish for bass no matter when or where. And the really great part about them is that they really catch a lot of bass and really big ones too.

So now it comes down to lure choice. So first you have to ask yourself are you going to fish shallow or deep or somewhere in between. Depth is the key factor in bass fishing and must be used to search for bass before all else. Next is to determine what is the logical lure to start with is or what other bait or lure you might want to try. What color is the water? Is it gin clear, slightly off color, dingy or dirty? How far down does a lure go before it goes out of sight? What does the sky look like, is it clear, partly cloudy, cloudy, threatening to rain? What about wind? Do you have a map of this lake to show where the points are, humps are, creek channels, reefs, etc? If you’re fishing in less than 5 feet of water you don’t use a rattle normally except maybe jigs. All these influence, which lure you, start to use, when you first go out on the water. If it is still early you may opt to go to the still shady side of the lake and try a frog or a buzz bait along the shoreline weed beds. Or you may decide to run and gun the points to see if you can get any last minute late and early feeders using a spinner bait or a deep running DT series crank bait. You might even decide to start running a 15 foot depth line and casting into shore and running the whole lake edge looking for those dock and shallow brush pile bass using a combination of a black and blue jig and a second rig with a lipless crank bait or Rapala Floating Minnow on it for those open areas or the other side of the boat. You could also run the 18-foot line and cast towards the weed line and cast into the 12-foot depth line and work the edge of the weed beds looking for bass who are set up to ambush prey fish on the edge of the weeds. You could work a floating worm or a frog over the tops of the weeds too. There are a lot of possibilities to consider. The time of year must be considered because seasonal movements of bass determine where they will be positioned. And besides the regular movements of the bass you have to take into consideration the temperature of the lake water as this may advance or delay those seasonal movements.

The Bagley Small Fry crank bait comes in a distinct body style. It looks like a real fish, kind of like a Sunfish with a flat narrow body that tapers to a little round place where the rear hooks goes. It comes in many colors Bream, Perch, Blue Gill, bass and others that look like a 2-inch replicas of the real thing. There are two bill types, one that is a shallow diver and the other is a medium diver. They dive 0-4 feet and 0-7 feet giving you a wide range of coverage. Try these lures out, the action is incredible and they are reasonably priced. But I like them because they really do look like the fish they are trying to imitate and that includes the color and the action. This makes them very attractive to the bass. There are two styles though and you need to be sure to buy the older style first and not the newer style. It is easy to see which model is which though as the newer models aren’t as flat sided. But this is a personal observation, so don’t think that it is written in stone.

Add a red hook to the front of all crank baits, as bass will zero in on this red flash and they will almost always zero in on the eye of a prey fish so they swallow it head first so the fins don’t get stuck in its throat. This will leave the back hook free to snag them on the outside of the mouth for a really good double hook up. If you change the rear hook to red, make sure you change all the hooks to red.

New types of buzz bait configurations, new spinner bait configurations and just plain new designs of crank baits, not to count plastics which have just plain exploded with colors and designs, have the ability to make you overload what the eye can take in all at one time. I use to say that the colors of fishing lures and baits could make a rainbow blush with envy but that just no longer applies. A rainbow just doesn’t encompass enough colors to even compete any more.

So you have made your choice of what you’re going to fish with and how you’re going to go about it, now all you have to do is figure out the colors you’re going to use. The colors should always reflect one of two things. If you’re fishing with plastics, the colors should always reflect forage colors found on the bottom of the lake. If you’re fishing above the bottom then your lure should always reflect the colors of the baitfish in the lake. Up here that means bluegill, sunfish, baby bass, generic minnow colors and silver, brown, blue, citruses, chrome, oranges and black for lure baits.

For top water lure these same colors work well but you can also add in frog greens, yellow, whites and reds. Depending on the type of top water lure you’re using you can also add silver/gray and pink.

Lipless crank baits, the perfect search lure used by the pros, are most often found in chrome, shad, and silver/black, chartreuse, crawfish colors, whites, fire-tigers, and light green/white. These basic colors cover the entire extremes of cloudy, sunny gin clear water to muddy and are so easy to use. You just cast them out and reel them back in. They are one of the easiest and most effective search baits made. But do remember to use smaller ones in the spring and fall and larger ones in the summer as this is the natural progression of they bait fish size they feed on. As a group and not individual lures, the lipless crank bait is the number 2 selling type of crank bait sold in America today. This speaks volumes about its ability to catch bass. Number one selling crank baits includes long minnow styles like the Rapala Original floating Minnow. One thing I do to my lipless crank baits is to remove the original hooks and replace them with gambler hooks. This hook shape is more squarish and holds the bass better that the rounder hooks that come with the lure. This eliminates a lot of frustration a lot of bass anglers express about being able to hook bass but that they seem to throw the lure a lot.

When it comes to buzz baits I’ve found it’s best to stick with the basics. That is to use blacks, whites and fire tiger for the blades and fish colors for the skirts. The skirts can be long or short but I have had the best luck with skirts that look small and skinny in the water. I also always use a trailer hook with them as this will improve your hook up ratio by 50% or better. Spinner baits should use fish colored blades for the best results but there is nothing wrong with using the traditional silver, gold, white, pearl and sometimes black. As for the body, I prefer a Muddler skirt, which are white, gray and black. Other colors cover the rainbow and this then becomes a personal choice but the basic colors seem to do the best. White, gray, gray/black, green and green/black are some of the most productive colors out there.

Remember too the basics of spinner bait usage, always use translucent, neutral (soft fish colors) and shades of white in gin clear water. In dirtier water use chartreuse, whites, blues, pumpkins colors, blue/black, silver white, silver/gray/white, reds, oranges and light green/silver. And for really dirty water like just after a rain, use black, fluorescent orange, red and chartreuse.

Also remember too that a long arm spinner bait will glide through heavy weeds and lily pads without hanging up or snagging. It will glide right through the thickest weeds without picking up any debris too. Short arm spinner baits have the blade directly over the skirt and work best helicoptering down in deep water. They are also less prone to short strikes because of the blade configuration.

I just love the new Sexy Shad color that Rapala has just started putting out. Personal choice plays the most important part in choosing a lure or bait. Each fisherman has a favorite color in each category of lures. These are their confidence baits and lures and they turn to them to do the job first almost every time. Now there is nothing wrong in this. They use them a lot, have confidence in them and they work them a lot and correctly. But when these few colors of lure fail to produce, most anglers are at a loss as to which color or which lure to change to. This is just not acceptable. You should have at least 5 lures in each category, crank bait, top water, spinner, plastic, etc, to change to without any degree of confidence loss. You should also be able to change categories at a moments notice with the same ease. Bass fishing is very dynamic, meaning it changes all the time. Hour to hour minute to minute sometimes, bass fishing and the way you fish must change with the times. That and it is important to note that when using trial and error methods, that when you do change colors, don’t make it a minor change. Change the colors drastically. Change from white to black or orange to grape. Make a big leap in colors. Only when you are fine-tuning do you make subtle color changes like adding a touch or red but leaving the rest of the colors the same.

Any change in the weather, say its clouds, and the sun comes out for an hour or two, this signals a change in how you should be fishing. Say the wind picks up or it starts to rain, again this is a signal to change how you fish. You have to be flexible when bass fishing, as it is not like any other game fish out there.

Now, another thing to watch for in lure selection is the split ring on the lure if it has one. Always check to insure that it is not rusted. The split ring whether between the body of the lure and the hooks or the one at the front of the lure where you tie to should be smooth and free sliding, no left over line knots still on the ring. If they are not, you could be in for a nasty surprise. A rusty split ring at the front of the lure may cause the line knot to fray and break. A rusty split ring between the body of the lure and the hooks may be stiff enough in a certain spot for the bass to get enough leverage on it to toss the hooks. Like sharp hooks, don’t fail to look at the split ring when checking your lures and baits. The only time you don’t tie to a slip ring is with a top water lure. For those you use a loop knot so the lure has lots of movement inside the knot for sliding left and right.

This leads into another thought that is not often looked into. Every fisherman is different and brings a slightly different approach, color or bait with them when they come to a curtain situation. This is great! It is our differences that make us unique and make us better or worse that someone else on a certain lake under the same conditions and yet the opposite is true on a different lake under different circumstances. That is why there are so many professional bass fishermen out there. They all bring something different with them that they learned as they grew up fishing. Different beliefs make for different Champions on different days.

Personal preference, the lures you know and trust are not those choices of another angler. Each of you has just as much confidence in those lures you’ve chosen but some will work better on some days on some lakes than others. This is called individual success. And boy does it vary from person to person. A person who is heavy on book smarts but light on time on the water may see things differently than an angler who is say less book smart but has twice the time on the water. Experience, book smarts, intuition (which comes from time on the water) are juggled by each angler and are never in the same proportions for one person as they are for another.

Another fact to consider when using surface lures or any lure like a suspending crank bait where you are using a stop and go presentation, it is advantageous to use a white tail feature hook on the rear of the lure. This tail feature hook straightens out when the lure is in motion and flairs out as it comes to a stop. This flair covers the rear hook and gives the lure a lifelike look to it from the rear view. This featured hook will catch more bass than a plain hook by a factor of 2 or more. This is one reason that most top water plugs come with a features rear hook. I go a step further and add them to any lure that I use a stop and go retrieve on with great success.

When using trial and error techniques to fine-tune your favorite presentation, try using strips of colored deflated balloons. You can add any color you want to any lure or bait you want. This added flash of color really works. Red can be added to your favorite crank bait, spinner bait or even plastic worms. This trick is a real bass getter besides being easy to change and can be applied to any lure or bait with little or no hassle.

So read as much as you can, understand what you read and apply it to what you already know, spend time on the water and learn everything there is about bass fishing. And let the individual angler in you come out.

When fishing, whether you catch one bass or forty, catching is not the important thing, what is important is what you learned that day about fishing. The mechanics of fishing, lure choice, color choice, the sky, and water conditions verses the activity level of the bass. Catching a bass lasts for a minute, what you learn from that catch lasts a lifetime. Now that is important.

One final thought about choosing and using different lures. Too many anglers have one retrieve style for crank baits, one for plastics, one for spinner baits and so on. This is so wrong. You need to be able to vary the retrieve of any bait or lure you are using. There are about as many ways to fish a jig as you have fingers and that goes for all the other lures you own. You have to be able to change the look of any bait or lure you use in order to catch more bass. If you are stuck just using one retrieve then your fish catching ability will suffer greatly. Just knowing how to cast and retrieve the different types of lures is not enough. Learn how to be aggressive and passive, learn to be imaginative with your presentations and you will catch a lot more bass and have a lot more fun while you are at it.

So, condensing this article down to a single sentence I would have to say; read, learn, fish and try to be the best angler you can be right now with the goal of being better every time you go out after that. You’re the one who fishes and enjoys the sport. Don’t ruin it by making it something too hard but try to learn enough to make it more pleasurable by being able to catch more bass consistently no matter where you go. This is a great and fun sport. As soon as it no longer becomes fun we stop doing it, so never loose that wide-eyed excitement every time you set the hook. That one second when setting the hook when you don’t know if it is a one pounder or an eight pounder is still the most exciting moment for me, every time. And always bring a camera, I swear every time I leave mine at home I bag a giant bass and every time I bring the camera, all I catch is one and two pounders, but then maybe that’s just me. My biggest bass to date here in Washington is eight pounds and yes there was no camera in the boat. But I did have a witness.

Bruce Middleton
bpmiddleton@peoplepc.com