My Top Three Shallow Water Baits

My Top Three Shallow Water Baits

Fall is here. The water is cool. The fish are shallow, or at least moving in that direction. It’s time for shallow baits to take advantage of that. Here are my top three… But, before I start talking about the baits we need to think about shallow water. It’s different in different parts of the country and in different lakes. It’s a term of art, not science. For this blog I’m going to tell you that I’m talking about water that’s no deeper than 3 feet. That’s pretty skinny, I know. Nevertheless, it’s fall and that’s the water I’ll target […]

My Bait for Extreme Conditions

My Bait for Extreme Conditions

Here we go, guys. We all know that spring is almost here. That’s a good thing, but it also presents us with problems — wild weather and extreme conditions. On Monday it might be a picture-perfect day, but on Tuesday it’ll be spitting ice and snow. When that happens I reach for the one bait I know they’ll eat — a hair jig. I’m talking about when all of the standard finesse baits and techniques don’t get you even one bite. The thing is, though, about hair jigs is that no lure made has more small, seemingly insignificant differences to […]

Summer Cover

Summer Cover

The weather is hot. The green cover in our lakes and rivers is growing like crazy.  That’s good for us. That’s bad for the bass. It’s a simple situation. We know where to find them when they’re shallow — somewhere that’s green. I’m not going to talk about all the types of cover that’s out there, only two types that grow — grass and trees. Before we get into that, however, I want to say something about deep and shallow. Right now a lot of the bass are out deep on main lake drops and channels, but a lot doesn’t […]

Top Secret! The MJ Rig

Top Secret! The MJ Rig

This time in our Top Secret Series we’re going to talk about the MJ rig, otherwise known as the spinner-jig. It’s super simple but it gives the fish something they haven’t seen before, something totally different. Basically, it’s a combination of flash and true tracking through the water. Let’s get started… You’ll need three things to build the MJ rig:  We’ll start with a soft plastic stickbait. I use the Berkley Powerbait Maxscent The General Worm. The most important part of the stickbait is that it must have a big, fat blunt end on the back for the spinner to […]

The Best 6 Baits Every Serious Bass Angler Should Own

The Best 6 Baits Every Serious Bass Angler Should Own

There must be a thousand fishing lures on the market. Choosing only six of them for this blog was no easy task. But sometimes we need to downsize so I did just that. I’ve listed the baits below in no particular order. The first three are power fishing lures. The last three are more in the finesse category. A crankbait This is a great bait because you can cover a lot of water with one and because they search out the bass. It’s almost like they’re calling the fish in to them. Although there are hundreds of them available, picking […]

Should I Neko Rig or Wacky Rig?

Should I Neko Rig or Wacky Rig?

That’s a question I get all the time, and it’s a good one. They’re both similar at first glance but they behave very differently and they should be used under very different conditions. Here’s how I make the decision… If I want my presentation to look vertical, I go with a Neko rig. This is typically in deeper water and along some kind of vertical cover or structure. The kind of places I’m thinking about are deep docks, deep and steep riprap and along bluff walls. My bait for the Neko rig is mostly a straight tail worm or a […]

I Fish the Neko Rig

I Fish the Neko Rig

Last week at the 2018 GEICO Bassmaster Classic presented by DICK’S Sporting Goods I fished the Neko rig. I didn’t finish all that high but I did catch several bass that I wouldn’t have caught any other way. So, I thought it was worth sharing. The Neko rig is a super successful technique because it mimics the real thing. When it’s fished right it kind of pecks along the bottom. That’s exactly what real baitfish do when they’re feeding. They put their tails up and then they just peck, peck, peck as they move across the bottom eating whatever they […]