Alright, folks, here we are, diving into the nitty-gritty of my top four baits for the month of April. April is that time when the fish wake up from their winter slumber, stretching their fins, and gearing up for some serious action. Now, depending on where you’re located, April could mean a variety of things for those fish. Up north, we’re talking about pre-spawn action, with those fish making a beeline for their spawning grounds. They’re staging, getting ready for the big show, and most importantly, they’re hungry. That’s right, in April, those fish are packing on the pounds before […]
The Berkley Nessie is an incredible bait not just because it fills a void by essentially crating the category of soft glide baits, but also because you can fish it so many different ways. Whether you’re an absolute novice or you’ve been fishing with glide baits for years, I encourage you to experiment with it. You may find new ways that work best on your home waters, but when starting out you’ll want to focus on six basic retrieves. The first is the simplest – just a steady retrieve. All you have to do is make a long cast and […]
By now you may have heard a few rumors about Berkley’s new Nessie. It’s a bait I’ve been helping with for a while, and to be honest it’s so distinctive and novel that I cannot recall the last time I was this excited about a new design. Why? It’s one of the first soft glide baits on the market, and that gives it some huge advantages over the competition. First, let me explain the name. “Nessie” evokes the Loch Ness Monster, and glide baits are known for being bigger than average lures. We have a 9-inch giant, a 7-incher for […]
All over the country, July means HOT weather. The water is hotter, the air is hotter, and the days are longer. That tends to push the bass deeper, where the oxygen content is higher, the water is cooler, and their prey is located. Of course, deep is a relative term. In some California reservoirs it might mean 100 feet, while in Florida it could mean 8 or 10 feet, but this is the time to focus much of your effort there. With that in mind, I’m going to give you information about four of my favorite July baits, two for […]
For a lot of us around the country, it’s early winter right now. The leaves are off the trees, the mornings are cold, and water temperatures are down. That typically means that fish have left their fall patterns. They’re headed to or in their wintering holes, but they’re still feeding. That often means you can still catch them with power fishing techniques. I have five lures that fit the bill The first, without a doubt, is a suspending jerkbait like the Rapala Shadow Rap. I can’t think of a better bait for this time of year. It emulates a struggling […]
One of the coolest ways to catch bass is with an Alabama Rig, also known as the “A Rig.” If you’re a fan of it like I am, you already know why it’s so good. The term that I often use is that it mesmerizes them. It really does. Out of the water, that contraption looks bulky and complicated, but in the water, it comes alive. It’s one of the best baits ever made to mimic a school of baitfish. The one downfall of the traditional Alabama Rig is the limited number of places where you can fish it. With […]
Starting out as an angler can often seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Part of my goal in creating this series is to make the learning process easier for beginners. In order to be efficient on the water, you have to learn to pack a tackle bag. It doesn’t matter if you’ll be fishing off the bank, from a kayak, in a jon boat or in a bigger boat – that bag is your tool box for a day on the water. Keep it simple by remembering that there are three main categories of gear: Terminal […]
Even at this stage in my career, after fishing for a living for several decades, sometimes I just want to get bites. I don’t care what it is, as long as there’s lots of action. If you’re a beginner, that may be your goal, too – to just have something pull back. Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of different lures to get that done. In fact, there’s one lure I know that catches everything that swims, and I want to tell you what it is, how to rig it and how to fish it. Once you gain confidence in […]
This is really a continuation of my thoughts about fishing the moment. It’s about where the fish are on any given day or any given hour, and how to find them. In most waters that we fish, there’s hard cover and soft cover. Hard cover is stuff like docks, laydowns, rock, and concrete. In the video I want you to watch along with this blog — you can view it here — the bass were on laydowns. Soft cover is stuff like weeds and other kinds of vegetation. I fished that off and on but the bass weren’t relating to […]
In the fall there’s one issue with bass fishing — baitfish. The thing is, though, not every day on the water is the same. Just because it’s fall and you think you know what’s going to happen doesn’t mean you don’t have to fish the moment or that you can predict what the fish will want with any degree of certainty. That’s what we’re going to talk about in this blog. There’s a video that goes along with this discussion that shows everything happening on the water in real-time. You can link to it here. It’s important that after you […]
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