Getting bass to bite requires being at the right place and at the right time, but it won't happen if you're showing them a lure that they're just not interested in. Now, to be sure, most baits, hey, they're gonna have their time in the limelight. There's a time and place where they absolutely shine and work really well. But there's only a handful that consistently produce time and time again, and I'm gonna tell you about three of them today. Starting with poppers. Poppers. They float on the water. They imitate a dying minnow, right? They look like a dying baitfish on the surface. They sit there and float, and you give them a little pop with your rod, and they jerk, and they twitch, and they act a little erratic. And bass just can't resist them.
And what you do is you cast it out there and it creates a splash. And when it does, all these rings come out. And just let it sit and let the rings dissipate, and keep going out till they're finally gone. Once they're gone, take your rod reel up some of that slack, and then give your rod a couple of pops. Just pop pop pop, and then let it stop. And guess what? You got some rings again, and let the rings come out dissipate then give it another pop pop and let it dissipate. Now, it doesn't have to be fast pops. It can be a pop pop, you know, pop pop pop. There's no real cadence per se. Like, I can't dictate to you exactly. No. Three pops just like a pop pop pop and let it sit for a long period of time.
Now, you can experiment with that you can make it two pops, four pops, and then experiment with the duration, how long that pause is. It can be a short pause. It can be a really long pause. Sometimes the bass, they want it one way and one way only, you have to experiment a little bit to figure out what it is they want that day. But another cadence is you throw it out there and you just keep pop pop pop all the way back to the boat.
Cast it and let it hit the water immediately. Reel the slack and just pop pop pop pop as you reel it and work it all the way back to the boat. It looks like a fleeing baitfish or something that's trying to get away, and the bass lying and wait, they have to react to it instantly. They either have to hit it or let it get away. And so, typically, this elicits a reaction bite, and you can get a lot of bites that way if they're... Sometimes if they seem reluctant to bite, the bite may seem slow. You might be able to activate them into biting by using this approach.
The other thing to consider is the water itself. You know, is it flat? Is there a little bit of ripple in the water? Is it a bit windy? Does it have a bit of a chop? Typically speaking, the same thing with sunny versus cloudy. The sunnier or clearer the weather is the flatter the water, the clearer the water, the more subtle of a pop that you want. These baits can just spit out a little bit of water or spit out a bunch. And it depends on the design of the bait as well as how hard you pop it. So if the water is somewhat calm and on a bright sunny day, just give it a little subtle, little twitch, just a bit of a twitch instead of a hard pop, and let it sit.
Conversely, if you got a good chop in the water, it's cloudy out, maybe the water is dingy, you need to create more commotion, more noise, more sound to attract the bass. So you need to, pop pop pop, hit it really hard to create that commotion. When you're looking for poppers, that's one of the key things to consider is the concave face on it, is it small, is it deep, or is it shallow? The deeper and the bigger the concave face is the more water it's gonna spit out, the more commotion it's gonna cause. Conversely, the smaller, more petite, it is the less of a concave it is, the less water is gonna spit out. So that can help you as far as your presentation goes.
There's, basically, a couple of different styles of poppers. Most of them are like what they call pencil style. It's a thin minnow-sized bait. And they're different lengths, 3 inch, 4 inch, 5 inch. It depends on the forage on your bait of that...on your lake for that time of year. So you want to match the size of your forage that the bass are eating. And, also, you can get some that are a bit of more bulky like a hula popper. It's got more bulk to it and it's shorter, but it creates a larger profile and a more commotion. And then, also, these frog poppers that are coming out now. And they have the shape of a frog. But it's got a concave face, and you can pop those. The nice thing about those is that they're weedless. And so you can bring those across the lily pads and weeds and other things without the fear of getting hung up.
Most poppers have treble hooks hanging from them, which brings me to another point. When you write on the package if you're not sure the brand, if it doesn't, like, say the brand name of the hooks on the package, it's probably a cheaper type of hook, so you want to swap them out. I like to swap them out with Gamakatsu Round Bend and Treble Hooks. They're just sharp. They're durable. They're tough. They catch fish. They hold on to them. So I have my confidence baits rigged with those treble hooks. Another thing you can do is the back treble hook can be adorned with feathers. And I think they sell them like that, Gamakatsu does, for example.
You can buy treble hooks with feathers on them, and you can put that on the back end of one of these poppers. And when it sits there, even though the bait is motionless, the feathers are still undulating and moving. It looks like a back fin. And it gives that bait a lifelike appearance even though you're not moving it, and that's all it takes sometimes. That bait is just sitting there still and the bass just can't stand it anymore, wallop it, and you haven't even moved it. So be ready for the strike at any time.
As for colors, it's pretty straightforward, guys. Because, yeah, if you look in a catalog, man, there's like every kind of color combination you can think of. But really it narrows down to a couple of different types. One is the solid body color. Okay, this is opaque. For me, it can be any color on the top. I don't care if it's frog pattern, perch pattern, shot pattern, or whatever. What I care about is the belly. It's got to be either white or that yellow perch body. You got yellow orange belly to it. The only time I don't use those is when the water is really clear. I fish some waters that the water is like bath water gin clear. You can see the bottom of the lake and 30 feet of water. It's that clear.
In those conditions or when it's really sunny out and you have clear water, I use translucent colors, something you can see through the body. Those tend to work a little bit better in those nice clear water conditions and sunny conditions. Again, you're popping with that too. Maybe a translucent bait with real light twitches on it is all that takes to get a 4-pound smallie to whack the snot out of it. So that's really all you need to do. You don't need to buy a million different colors and sizes that's just it. Keep it to those basics. And go out and have some fun with that.
The next style of bait is crankbaits, specifically, medium diving crankbaits. Of course, you can get them shallow diving. You can get them super deep diving. But the bread and butter of crankbaits is the medium diving ones. I'm talking about the ones that dive between 6 and 10 feet deep. That's gonna be with a majority of your bass where they're actively feeding bass are, and so you need to have those in your arsenal. And they work for a good reason. They resemble baitfish, which is a staple of the bass diet. So, of course, they come in all kinds of sizes and colors and shapes and different sounds. So let me kind of narrow it down for you make it pretty easy to figure out what to get and where.
First of all, the thing to consider is the retrieve. And this is gonna help you a little bit when I get to the different sizes and colors and stuff. The retrieve, for the most part, the thinner the diameter line, the deeper the bait is gonna go. So like a 10-pound, 12-pound line, maybe even 8-pound line, it's gonna allow that bait to get down to its maximum depth range, which is, typically, what you want for the most part. So you're, like, outside weed lines. You want to get down to that 6-foot, 8-foot, 10-foot range, outside edges of dock pilings along tapering points that have scattered boulders or stumps on it. This is the type of thing where you fish these, and you want it to get it down there close to the bottom, maybe even sometimes hitting the bottom.
The opposite of that is if you want to go shallower. You can upsize and go with 20-pound, 25-pound test and it won't dive as deep. This works great. Say, for example, you've got a crankbait that dives down to 8 feet deep, you've got weeds that top out about 7 foot, maybe 6 foot and, of course, you want it to get down there and tick the tops of the weeds every once in a while. But if it's burying down there and you're just ripping out a bunch of weeds, go up in line size and now it dives shallower and you're not gonna have that problem anymore. You know, there's a variety of different reasons why you might want it to dive shallower, but using a thicker diameter line will solve that.
For retrieves, well, most of the time, as a straight retrieve works great. Cast it out, wind it back in, you're gonna get bit. They work that well. And you can fish that for the rest of your life and you're gonna catch fish. However, there are times when you can elicit more strikes, or sometimes they don't want a steady retrieve, and so what are you gonna do? One of the ways to do it is to bounce the lure off of objects. So, for example, your fishing riprap. Very popular place to fish crankbaits. Fishing riprap, you've got boulders and chunk rock out there. Throw that crankbait out there that'll dive deeper than the depth that you're fishing and let it bounce off those rocks. When it hits, it pauses momentarily and deflects, and that often triggers a bite.
Sometimes when it hits and deflects pause it, just pause it for a minute. It looks like a stunned baitfish. And then start to reel it again. Sometimes the bass warp it when you pause like that, other times when you resume your retrieve, bam, they'll hit it there. So don't just bounce it off the rocks, that can work. But if you need to, pause it, see if that works. Now, other times and when it hits, start reeling fast, like, speed it up all of a sudden. Now, it hits, ricochets off in a different direction and it speeds up. That change in direction will trigger a bite. You can do this off a dock pilings, off a stomps, off a boulder fields, what have you? But if you're not able to bounce it off things, then the old stop-and-go retrieve works very well.
There's a reason why people have been doing this for decades, and that is you're reeling it along, and then you stop, and sometimes when you do that, bam, you get bit. Or you stop and then you start your retrieve you get bit. Why does that happen? A lot of times you're retrieving in a straight retrieve, a bass will come up and follow it and you've attracted its attention, you stop it. Suddenly, it's in its face and he has to react, and, typically, that's a bite. It's either that or they're gonna veer off. But a lot of times, it you end up getting bit. So those are a couple of them, the retrieves, different ways to fish them, and to improve the amount of bass that you get with these crankbaits.
As for what to buy, right? What to look for? A couple of key things. Going back to the hooks. Just like in the poppers if you don't know what brand of hooks they are, then swap them out. I, again, go with the Gamakatsu Round Bend Hooks. As for colors, it's pretty straightforward. There's three categories of colors that you want. One is baitfish. It's pretty straightforward. If you're in an area that's got a lot of shad, then you want shad color baitfish. If you're in the north where there's a lot of perch and bluegill, you want perch and bluegill. Actually, bluegill in the south too. So you want bluegill regardless of latitude but, typically, in the south shad, north perch.
And another one is crawdads. There's three different shades of crawdads, right? There's green, red, and brown, that's right. You want those three types. Red works best in the springtime when the fish are up shallow, but the other colors, they work year-round as well. And then, finally, you want chartreuse crankbaits, whether that be a firetiger pattern or just chartreuse with the black back. These work exceptionally well in the fall when bass are focused on bluegill and perch and other baitfish. All right. That's when I break out the chartreuse crankbaits. That's when I get the most bites out of them at that time of year. They don't work as effectively for me other times of the year, but in the fall, like, that's all they want. So those three colors. That's about all you need. Just get those basics, and I guarantee you're gonna catch fish.
The next one to get is the Senko or Senko style. That's called a stick bait. And it's a 5-inch piece of plastic that looks like it doesn't do squat. But, boy, does it catch fish. Why? It's because of the way it falls in the water. And this is the key thing. Let me get into how you, actually, fish it because, this, a lot of people fish it wrong. You don't cast it out and wind it back in like you do a normal lure, and you don't need to use snaps or swivels or add other weights to it using braided to fluorocarbon line, all this kind of stuff. No. What you do is you cast it out.
We need Texas rig, first of all, so it's weedless. Texas rig, in my book, means the hook is is buried back in the plastic. So it's weedless, weightless. You cast it out. You don't want to wind in the line. It's on slack line and let it fall on slack line. What happens is it falls horizontally like this. And when it falls, it kind of, you know, it undulates as it falls. That wiggling action and that slow fall is exactly what triggers the bite. So if you have it on a tight line, it's gonna fall like this and it's gonna fall more straight. It won't look as natural. It'll fall at a different rate too. So it has to be on slack line.
The key thing about that then is how do you detect a bite? Well, watch the line. Watch where the line enters the water and you'll see it twitch or it's sinking at a certain rate and suddenly it speeds up, right? It suddenly takes off on you. Well, a fish has it. So reel up the slack and pop them and set the hook. I use fluorocarbon line with these, straight up 12-pound to 15-pound fluorocarbon line. Fluorocarbon because it sinks at about the same rate as the Senko, so it's not going to inhibit its movement. It's not gonna pull it up. It's not gonna drag it down. It's gonna just fall with it and allow it to fall naturally.
This is why I don't have braid and then fluorocarbon as a leader because the braids gonna interfere with that. It's gonna do this. No matter where the braid is tied, it's more buoyant and it's gonna pull that bait up, and it's gonna make it fall on attitude like this at a different rate. So it's straight fluorocarbon. Let's make it simple. I use a unit not when I tie to the hook. That's your basic way of fishing it.
Another way to fish it is wacky rig. Same thing. It's weightless, but now you put a hook in the middle. I like to use a Gamakatsu Wacky Hook because it's got Titanium weed guards on it. So, now, it's weedless. So I can fish it wherever I want to. Typically, where you fish these baits as you fish them on the outside weed lines, you skip them under docks, you bring them across the top of weeds or in inside of lily pad fields, places where it could get hung up. So that's why the Texas rig works really well, but if you've got that weedless wacky hook, it works just as good. And, also, presentation is the same. Again, cast it out and let it fall all by itself on slack line.
But with a weedless wacky worm, what it does is now both ends of it are undulating like this. They kind of go up like this and they fall. And it's a different look. Gives a different feel. It gives a little bit different action to it. And it's very appealing to the bass. Plus, because the hook is somewhat exposed you get better hookups So it's a great way to fish these Senko style baits. As for sizes, the 5-inch size is typical. That's what most people get. Don't be afraid to go to 4 inch. It's funny, these baits have been around for decades, 5-inch size green pumpkin. Everybody throws a 5-inch green pumpkin Senko style bait and the fish fall for it time and time and time again. They don't get tired of it. It's very consistent.
However, I have found sometimes I get more bites if I downsize to a 4 inch. Maybe the bass are getting used to a 5 inch or perhaps they're just feeding on smaller baitfish. I can't tell you exactly the reason why. But sometimes if I don't feel them get enough bites with the 5-inch Senko, I'll move down to a 4 inch and I'll get more bites. So don't be afraid to try a different size to see which you get more bites. That's, basically, it, guys. Those are the three top baits that work really well pretty much under most conditions. If you have those in your arsenal, you're bound to catch some fish. Hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this, visit bassresource.com
