Your Best and Worst

[Jeffrey Walker]

What is your best 3 baits/lures/presentations and what is your worst?  mine are as follows

 

Best 3 

1) top water - whopper plopped followed by frog, followed by megabass popmax.  in fairness to the buzz bait, i have not used it as much as ploppers. i was really excited by chasebaits bird but that thing hasn’t produced at all. 

 

2) Senko/Creature bait - weighted or weightless, this would be my second overall performer.  although i am impatient when it comes to bottom fishing, this has proven itself worthy. love the bellows gill, reaction innovations and of course senko but i prefer 6in and up. Texas rigged or weightless. Never really tried wacky rig or shaky head or any of the rest.  not as much luck with flukes. 

 

3) Wakebait/Sub-Surface  - Spro Rat/shell-cracker G2, used much less but have produced amazing results for the minimal time.  

 

4) Honorable mention - drop shot, only used it twice but caught fish.  granted ponds probably not the best place.

 

Worst 3 

1) Spinner baits / Chatterbaits. caught 1 fish in 3 years but i admit don’t use it often. maybe i don’t understand when and where to use it? if i had to choose spinner bait over chatter bait, based on my limited same spinner bait wins. never caught anything on a chatter bait.

 

2) plastic swim baits - keitech and paddle tails -  these seem useless to me and not worth the effort, if something is going to swim thru the water, mine as well have some waggle and sound like the wake baits above. don’t understand these or the huddleston and swim bait crowd.  it just seems to be more energy and time spent than reward. tell me i’m wrong 

 

3) Crankbait - no luck with these ever. granted i fish mostly ponds so maybe not the right venue but never had any luck. includes hard body jerkbaits, square bills, lipless etc.

 

4) jigs. i know i said only 3 but who catches fish on jigs?? i don’t, and moreover i don’t understand why o would use a jig when we have other and better bottom presentations such a texas rig or weightless bait??

 

 

[ironbjorn]

Anything soft plastic is what I'm best at, as well as lipless and squarebill crankbaits.

 

Chatterbaits are the worst. They were alright for awhile but have become a nightmare for me.

 

Spinnerbaits have made a resurgence for me, but they're more about opportunity and size than they are numbers.

[Jeffrey Walker]

lipless and square bill produce in what bodies of waters?l for you Ironbjoen?

[ironbjorn]

8 minutes ago, Jeffrey Walker said:

lipless and square bill produce in what bodies of waters?l for you Ironbjoen?

Any, but mostly fishing ponds and rivers, lipless are great in ponds (1/4 oz Rat-L-Trap in Blue Shiner is my best) and squarebills are great in rivers smashing off rocks in fast water.

[Bluebasser86]

Best 3

Bladed Jig

Jig

Ned 

 

Worst 3

C rig

Fluke

Deep cranks

[Ravox]

I’m in South Florida location has a lot to do with my choice

 

Best 3: Plastic Worms, Lipless Crankbait (peacock bass love them) and Fluke

 

Worst 3: Chatterbait, Spinnerbait , Whopper Plopper (im trying hard all those baits no luck so far)

[WRB]

Top water

Mid depth zone

Bottom 

Worst sitting home and key board fishing.

Tom

 

[GRiver]

Best : plastic worms, walking the dog or popper type top water and creature baits, fishing the pads.

worst: whooper plopper, deep cranks, and flukes, I still fish them. I just can’t catch anything on them.

 

[Deleted account]

I have no best and worse, I sling stuff that catches fish for me and I do it well.

[Mike L]

Best…

Frog

Punching

Sight Fishing

Swim Worm

 

Worst…

Ned

Drop

Wacky

Shaky

 

 

 

 

Mike

[leinad]

best : light jig head ( round head , mushroom, etc , with any 3.5 or smaller plastic bait )

           t rig 6-7" worm

           

worst : hollow body frogs !!!!

             spinner baits

 

[Bankc]

Best:

Jig

Crankbait

T-rigged worm

 

Worst:

Jerkbait

Swimbait

Swim jig

 

I can't get any of those "worst" ones to work for me, but I know they're popular with others, so they must work, so I keep trying.  And if they're not biting on one of my "best" lures, then I'm probably getting skunked.  I'll fish lots of stuff, and certain times of the year other baits will temporarily work their way into my "best" category, like shakey heads in early spring or topwaters in summer.  But those I listed are the ones I can count on, just about year-round.  

[Tennessee Boy]

Very interesting thread.  The same lure is one man’s best and another man’s worst.   Could it be the man and not the lure?

[ironbjorn]

2 minutes ago, Tennessee Boy said:

Very interesting thread.  The same lure is one man’s best and another man’s worst.   Could it be the man and not the lure?

Sometimes. Sometimes it's also about the body of water. 

[BrianMDTX]

Best

 

Senko (TR or WR)

Zoom Trick TR

Neko Macho TR or Neko rig

 

Worst

 

Chatterbait (zero catches)

Tubes (zero catches)

Frogs (zero catches)

 

Honorable Mentions:

Mann’s Jelly Worm TR

Fat IKA

Squarebills

Jerkbaits

Whopper Plopper

Zara Spook

PopMax

 

Dishonorable Mention

Jigs (one catch)

Flukes (one catch)

 

Up-n-comer

Spinnerbait (only two catches before this year; caught two bass and a big cat on them in 2022)

[king fisher]

   BEST

Buzzbait

Spinnerbait

Crankbait

 

  WORST

Crankbait

Spinnerbait

Buzzbait

 

Depends on the day.

 

 

[Sphynx]

I'd argue the "why fish a jig when we have better options" thing until the cows come home, I don't think I have a single other bait that consistently produces big fish as well as a jig...may not catch huge numbers on them, but when the jig bite is on, it's the bigger fish that get them.

 

Best 3

 

Topwater - Toss up between a walking bait and a popper, I catch a ton every year on these when the water is reasonably calm

 

Moving bait - Tie between a paddletail and a lipless, I think it's a noise thing, if one doesn't work one day, the other typically does.

 

Bottom - Jigs and Tubes here. Not sure why, but the tube has catapulted itself into an indispensable technique for me on the river chasing smallmouth.

 

 

Worst 3

 

Topwater - Frogs and Whopper Ploppers just don't tend to get it done around my haunts

 

Moving bait - Deep cranks, don't get on enough boats to use them often.

 

Bottom - C-rigs tend to be more trouble than they are worth for me with bass.

[RyAxion]

My 3 Best:

1. Square bills: perfect search bait in my book, and responsible for turning off the skunk.

2. Poppers: self-explanatory, especially in early fall.

3. Spinnerbaits: Caught my second biggest smallmouth (4 lb. 2 oz.) and another effective search bait with more flash (and creativity with skirts and blades)

 

My 3 worst:

1. Frogs: I got too excited with the blowups to wait for the perfect time to set the hook.

2. Jigs: Caught some monsters, but a bit too slow for my liking.

3. Deep cranks: my waters aren't deep enough to warrant them.

 

No final reason to give up on worst lures/techniques though; we're still learning.

[RevoSEMIpro]

They all have their days...

 

My three confidence baits are definitely squarebills, bladed jig, and flukes in that order.

 

Very little confidence with punching rigs of any kind.  Spinnerbaits don't last long for me in Pike country so I rarely throw them now.  Deep cranking is pretty niche in these parts, not a lot of confidence there. 

[N Florida Mike]

I do best on Soft plastics 

1. Toss up between senkos/flukes

2.Speed worms

3. Trick worms

I use several others successfully also , mostly creature baits.

 

Worst:

1. Jigs

2. Crankbaits

3. Big swimbaits

 

 

 

 

[the reel ess]

Best: Lipless crank (Academy house brand, specifically), frog (not great this season), Trick Worm, Speed Worm, Jig (or T-rig). The jig is not even an everyday producer. But when it is, they're usually quality fish. So one stays tied on.

 

Hon Mention: Whopper Plopper

 

Worst: chatterbaits, anything big for the sake of being big, original Spook. The Super Spook Jr badly outfishes the original.

[gim]

I haven't been fishing enough this season to develop a good pattern yet, but based on my last two seasons, here are mine.

 

3 best: spinnerbait (black), chatterbait (white), and wacky rig (chartreuse with black flake)

3 worst: pretty much any topwater, crank baits (I don't fish them much), and ned rig

 

I used to hammer them on a ned rig.  Lately, not so much.  I also used to hammer them on various topwaters, especially a buzz bait.  The past several seasons have been almost completely void of any topwater bite.

[Bankbeater]

3 Best:

Weightless Plastic Worm

Topwater

Texas rigged craw

 

3 Worst:

Crankbait

Lipless Crankbait

Jigs

 

A complete 180 from last year this time.

 

[Jeffrey Walker]

anyone else see a pattern?

 

my unscientific observation is that senkos and Trl-rigged and other versions on plastics like flukes and creature baits seems to be a top performer as is topwater of the like.

 

Bottom performers are crank baits, chatterbaits, spinner baits swim jigs and swim baits 

 

neutral seems to be jigs and rigs like shaky head and others aside from T-rigs. 

 

agree? disagree?

[Columbia Craw]

Best to worst as in catching effectiveness or capability to fish the lure/ technique? I have no best. I have worse because I don’t care to fish them be it big swim baits and the umbrella rig.