Effectiveness of baits from year to year

[JHoss]

Just finished up my 4th year of tournament bassin and noticed that some of my most confident baits/styles from the last few years didn't play as much this year. I'm curious if this is something others have observed as well and your thoughts on why?

 

There's a few explanations that come to mind:

1) I'm learning/gaining confidence in other techniques and using those in places I would normally use an old confidence bait thus reducing the time that bait spends in the water and the number of fish it comes in front of.

2) Fish are constantly adapting to different baits/sounds and that causes a cycle of productive and unproductive years for certain baits. Maybe they've heard too many chatterbaits by now and are getting turned off by them.

3) I've tweaked something in my gear or retrieve that's caused an inadvertent change. Maybe a line change or hook change is affecting the fall rate or shimmy of a bait.

 

 

[Functional]

Every year its something different. First year on my home lake I dont think I fished anything but a spinnerbait. Second year was year of the chatterbait, third was swimjig and this year has been jerkbaits.

 

I still fish all of them but I'll be honest I've turned into @TnRiver46 with a spinnerbait the past 2 years. I dont think I've caught 5 fish on one recently.

 

Not sure if its your own personal style changing or places you start keying in on from year to year or if its a fish thing. It does happen to me though. 

[Pat Brown]

I definitely feel like it's good to kind of change things up a little bit even within a bait category, especially if you're hammering on the same fish all the time.  Little tiny changes can make a big difference.  At the end of the day it's all about showing fish something different if you really want to get a bite from a special fish.

 

I definitely think that tournament angling is a unique subset of our bass fishing culture because tournament anglers not only often are watching fish react in real time to their baits. They're targeting very specific fish, often in community areas at the same time as each other and I would think it would make it very difficult to figure out what the heck is going on ever with any sort of certainty.

 

In my experience with my fish on my lakes that get the pressure that they get - being a little bit different pays off big time sometimes!

 

Downsizing my bait or line or upsizing my bait or adding some weight or putting a little color on it with a marker, etc. Those are the types of things that keep baits working year after year for me!  YMMV

 

The fact of the matter is the bass are eating on the top or in the middle or on the bottom.  Bass are going to eat something moving fast or moving medium speed or moving slow. 

 

It's up to us to figure out how that's all going to play out and I think that the lure don't really matter that much!

[softwateronly]

Hahaha, @Functional this is the 1st year in many that I found sustained success with a spinnerbait!  Since I fish over 85% of my time on 2 conjoined lakes that only come in at 300 acres, I like to learn lots of bait options to help mitigate the bass winning.

 

scott

[casts_by_fly]

All of the above.  And I'd throw in the weather/fish's mood changes day to day so the days you got last year aren't the days you got this year.  Up here the weather has been sunny and dry all summer.  No rain and few windy days.  That'll fish very different to a mostly grey summer with lots of rain and wind.  

[gim]

7 hours ago, JHoss said:

Maybe they've heard too many chatterbaits by now and are getting turned off by them.

 

Oh I think this is absolutely true.  Not specifically just for a chatterbait, but that specific type of lure is definitely a good example of fish seeing it so often that they become less likely to bite it.  Another good example here is frogs, or topwater in general.

[Bankbeater]

It's not just the baits, but it can be the presentations too.

[Susky River Rat]

I never got top water or ned rigs going this year. But spinners and cranks were solid most the year. 

[Spankey]

Crankbait fishing is my favorite way to go about this bass fishing. I use stuff that I swear by and would bet the house and kids over. Not this year. I am at a loss as to my sudden fall off the earth type of fishing. But I moved away from it. It has been a soft plastics season. I found the whole season to be one that had quirks. Some things that didn’t make sense but got a few nice fish. 
At the lake I can come to grips with it a bit better because if the bass are remaining at a deeper depth and my crankbait game is not that deep as they are, well I can only do so much. My bigger confusion as to the bite lack on the river. I believe my head is a mess over it. And I let it carry over. I’ve resigned myself to just get on board with it next season. It’s not me, it’s not my baits or bait choices. I’ll just write it off. If I don’t I’ll need to check in to therapy. 

[papajoe222]

Yea, I've been experiencing this.

Every season as far back as I can remember, there's been one lure that's produced better than what did the previous year.  That excludes soft plastics and jigs. Crankbaits one year, spinnerbaits the next, even topwater from pre-spawn, to iceup. Then there's years when hard baits just don't produce well at all and lately, that's been the situation.  Sometimes it's the same category of lure, but a different style. Flat sided cranks seem to be hot one year and the next it's square bills and the third year, flat sided are back hitting clean up.

[VTFan]

I'm a firm believer that bass become accustomed to baits, colors, retrieves. For the past two years in my local pond I was tearing them up with a wacky rig. This year.....I bet I haven't caught 5 bass on a wacky rig. I remember one year the bait of choice was a super shallow running crankbait, another year it was a chatterbait.  JMHO.

[Catt]

Hate to burst y'all's bubble

 

Established in 1894, Heddon Lures

Established in 1926,  Fred Arbogast Company

Established in 1936, Lauri Rapala

 

Bill Lewis 

Bomber

Lindy/Little Joe

Mr. Twister

Norman

Smithwick 

All are still major players

 

Y'all have a nice day!

[Pat Brown]

15 hours ago, gimruis said:

 

Oh I think this is absolutely true.  Not specifically just for a chatterbait, but that specific type of lure is definitely a good example of fish seeing it so often that they become less likely to bite it.  Another good example here is frogs, or topwater in general.

 

 

Call me crazy if you want, but I don't think bass can be conditioned to a part of the water column - but I hear what you're saying. 

 

A lot of lures (chatterbait and lipless and buzzbaits and frogs included) - unless you learn how to kind of do special stuff with them - kind of only do one thing - and if the fish learn that thing that everyone does with the lure and it's also what you do with the lure - you're not going to get a bite.

 

I think regardless of what part of the water column you select - got to be a little different 😎👍🏻😉 

 

 

 

 

[Mobasser]

A plastic worm has been a consistent bass catcher for 50 years. It still works, and will continue to work in the future.

[Swamp Girl]

I believe that bass do learn lures, which is why I try to be proactive and keep switching up the lures I use. As I wrote in my year-end review, I started 2024 with underspins, switched to spinnerbaits, and finished with a popper. I'd like to change my rotation for 2025, although an underspin's weedproofness makes it a perfect lure for shallow spring bogging. 

[Catt]

Rayburn Red Rat-L-Trap ripped outta grass has been killing em for years and will again the spring.

 

Did the bass stop biting it or did we stop throwing it?

[gim]

5 minutes ago, Catt said:

Did the bass stop biting it or did we stop throwing it?

 

In my specific case, at least "some" of the bass stopped biting certain lures as time wore on, which led to me to stop throwing it.  So the latter was a result of the former.  No reason to beat on a dead horse when its already dead.

[Swamp Girl]

8 minutes ago, gimruis said:

 

In my specific case, at least "some" of the bass stopped biting certain lures as time wore on, which led to me to stop throwing it.  So the latter was a result of the former.  No reason to beat on a dead horse when its already dead.

 

Same with me. If I'm not catching bass with a particular lure, I'm quick to change.

[Pat Brown]

I think in the end we develop our own repertoire of confusion and we adapt to the fish that we like to fish for in the places we like to fish for them.

 

Fishing is definitely more for fun and soul satisfaction than anything else and I think lure selection should always be in that spirit!  I catch em how I like and so should each angler.   😎😎😎

[gim]

Just now, Swamp Girl said:

 

Same with me. If I'm not catching bass with a particular lure, I'm quick to change.

 

And the opposite is true too.  When they're biting, I beat that into a pulp until its over.

 

Some people switch up lures when they're biting.  I can't wrap my head around that one.

[Rockhopper]

White spinnerbait.  All day. Everyday. Year after year.

[Tennessee Boy]

We anglers often seek answers to unanswerable questions. Things change from day to day and year to year. Did the bass learn to avoid my lures? Was it the weather? Was it the result of FFS? Am I losing my touch? Was it just bad luck?  Without a lot of data gathered in a controlled manner, it is impossible to know with any certainty. Bass fishing is full of myths that started when people convinced themselves that something was true without the facts to prove it. I try very hard not to speculate and to keep an open mind to the possibilities.

[Mobasser]

I think some folks get hung up on certain baits. If the fish don't hit them, they think they don't work anymore. The bait may not work that particular day. Next week you could be making a killing with it.                           

[gim]

18 minutes ago, Rockhopper said:

White spinnerbait.  All day. Everyday. Year after year.

 

I know someone who goes with a green one instead, aka "greenie."  He will toss that thing for hours with nothing to show for it while the rest of us are killing it on another presenation, and he still refuses to switch.

 

At one point we had 35 bass in the boat and asked him if he wanted the plastic we were using.  He looked at us and said "you and your rubbers" and then went back to chucking greenie.

 

Dig your own grave, and then die in it.

 

[Mobasser]

Doug Hannon wrote about the plastic worm years ago. He claimed that the plastic worm was the one lure that bass could not remember or become used to. I think this is true 100 percent. Through most of the season the plastic worm works. It's always fun to mix it up and try new or different things, but the worm still rules much of the time.