Bass Fishing 101 Part 1

In this post I figure I’d share some tips for the novice fisher-person, basic Bass Fishing 101, hence the title. In Part 1 I’ll share just the basic information concerning the different styles and rigging techniques and in Part 2 I will go into more detail concerning them.

First off let’s start with the knots I like to use. Along time ago as I was watching a popular fishing show the host did a scientific test on which knot was the best by using a machine that measured break strength of some knots. Consistently the Palomar knot out performed all others. The line never broke at the knot so this told me that the knot did not weaken the line at all. The biggest trick was to wet the line before pulling it tight to reduce abrasion.

Since that day the Palomar knot is the knot I use about 90% of the time. It’s very easy to tie, even in the dark. One tip, its easier to run the line through the hook eye, point side first then run it back through instead of attempting to push the line doubled up through the eye. This is the knot to use on a drop shot rig, just leave a long, 8-24 inch “Tag” end to attach the weight. I’ll cover the details a little later.

Another good knot is the Trilene knot, also known in some circles as a modified clinch knot This is the knot that my dad taught me when I was very young, he however just called “The Fishing Knot”

There are several other good knots one can use but the 2 I mentioned above are the ones I personally use. Quick, easy and efficient.

Line: There are a lot of good lines out there, I personally like Maxima. Not just because they are a sponsor of mine but their line has never failed me. As far as how heavy line? My rule is to always use the lightest line you can get away with. About the only time that rule does not apply is when fishing top water lures. When fishing top water lures I use a heavy line because the line floats better and helps keep the nose of your lure up.

Now I’ll discuss some different terms of techniques as well as some information on each.

Plastics. Talk about a whole big can of worms. You’ve got worms, these come in a very wide range of sizes and styles. You’ve got little finesse type lures, reapers, gobies and allot of others. Next there are Lizards, Crawfish imitations, Creature Type baits, Senko type do nothing baits, Sluggo’s, Tubes…………….. I could go on and on, the list is so vast.

For fishing plastic’s you’ve got your several different styles of fishing. There is the Carolina Rig, Split Shot Rig, Texas Rig, Drop Shot Rig, Darter Head, Slider Head and Shakey Heads. Where terms like Dragging, Long Lining, Shaking, Doodling and Dead Sticking are used commonly

1. Carolina Rig:
This is a rig generally used to cover allot of water semi quickly. It consists of. A “Barrel” type weight, one that line can slide freely through, a swivel, a glass or plastic bead, a 12-48 leader and of course the hook.
There is no right size weight to use. You want to be able to get the bait down to the bottom and be able to stay in contact with your offering as well as the bottom. To rig it, insert the line from your rod into and through the weight. Place your glass or plastic bead on the line, the bead is mainly used to protect your knot from the sinker banging on it. It also provides sound, especially effective in off colored water. Tie your swivel on, then your leader, the length of the leader depends on how far you want your bait to be off the bottom. Tie on your hook, the size depends on the size of your lure. Finally, rig up your bait weedless.

2. Split Shot Rig: This rig is pretty much used the same as the Carolina rig only slower. Its just a modified finesse version of the Carolina rig on light line. The difference being, no swivel, no bead, no extra leader and you use a different weight. To rig this one simply tie on your hook and pinch a round split shot, 8-24 inches up your line, of course don’t forget to add your lure, rigged weedless.

3. Texas Rig: This is one of the most common techniques for fishing plastic worms when the fish are feeding off the bottom. Get yourself a bullet style sinker and hook. Slide the sinker on your line with the “pointy” side facing upwards and tie your hook on. If you add a bead between the weight and hook you convert the basic Texas rig to a Doodling rig. You can also “Peg” the weight to keep it from sliding. This “pegging of the weight” technique is used when your fishing in weeds or sticks and you don’t want the weight and worm to separate.

4. Drop Shot Rig: This rig is effective when bass are feeding up off the bottom. To rig this one tie your hook on with the Palomer knot and leave a 6-18 inch tag end. After tying the knot on take the tag end and run it through the eye of the hook, point side up and pull it tight. What this does is causes your hook to stand out straight allowing your bait to sit level. I like to tie a snap swivel on then attach a “Bell Style” also known as a casting sinker, weight to the snap. This helps to avoid line twist. Then attach your bait to the nook. Either nose hook it with the hook exposed or rig it weedless, whichever way the situation dictates.

5. Darter, Slider and Shakey Heads: These techniques are deadly on suspended fish. All these rigs consist of are just a lead head on a hook. The way they are rigged is just insert the hook into the worm and in most cases you leave the hook exposed but rig it weedless if the situation dictates.

From plastics we now go to reaction baits. The name Reaction Baits cover a whole plethora of baits. They are basically any bait where your looking for a reaction type bite.

The bass sees it and then he reacts to, be it out of hunger, anger or just plain orneriness. Here you’ve got, Surface baits, Rip baits, Jerk baits, Crank baits, Spinner baits, Chatter baits and Swim baits, which I discussed earlier. As you can see the list is quite large and I’m sure I left quite a few off of my list. Terms like, Walk the Dog, Popping, Waking, Burning, Jerking, Twitching, Cranking, And Slow Rolling are common with these techniques.

Then you’ve got jigs. These are one of my favorite techniques for catching quality bass. I will be dedicating a whole article to these in the future. Basically they are a lead head with a skirt and a trailer. They are generally thought to resemble a crayfish, which just in case you didn’t know, is a fresh water lobster. I don’t know about you but I sure have a tough time passing up lobster and the bass seem to share my weakness.

There are also drop style baits. In this category you have Spoons and Ice Jigs. The Drop Shot and Shakey Head techniques also fit into here. These techniques excel during the colder months but are also effective when the bass are suspending or sitting on structure to deep to get a crank bait down to.

Well readers, that should give you some information to absorb. Like I said, I’ll go into more details on these techniques in part 2.

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

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Winter Time Blues Part 2

Old man winter is still here, the temperatures are still low and the wind is blowing so I guess I wont be hooking up the boat today. I talked about rod and reel maintenance earlier now lets talk about some lure “Tweaks” that at least in my opinion have helped me get more bites. Always remember, if you have confidence in what your doing on the water you will take the time to present your offering correctly and it will produce fish. If you don’t believe your going to catch fish then you wont take the time to present your bait right and more often than not you go home empty handed.

Some of my favorite lure modifications are as follows. Replacing the hooks on your crank baits with sharp red hooks. Red hooks resemble a blood trail, like a bleeding fish and if you understand bass they will always pick the easiest, injured prey first. Me personally, I just replace the front hook because I want to present the image that my poor little fish is bleeding from the gills and is just asking to be attacked. I also replace the rear hooks with some good quality super sharp hooks, just not in red. I personally like the X-Point and Diachhi hooks, super sharp right out of the package and great quality, available at Bass Pro Shops. Gamakatsu also makes a good hook also available at Bass Pro Shops. These hooks are a little on the pricey side but well worth the money. If you cant afford these expensive ones get yourself a file and sharpen your hooks to a sticky sharp. It will make a difference in your hook up ratio.

On a side note, I also like to use red hooks when fishing soft plastics. I have been doing this long before it was “The In Thing” and I had many people laugh at me. Let me explain. At the time I was dating this lady who had a son and he got hold of my tackle and proceeded to paint some of my worm hooks red with finger nail polish. At first I was a little upset at him and then he asked me to promise him I would try them at my upcoming tournament, I reluctantly said yes. I got teased for about the first 2 hours of the tournament by my boater, I didn’t own a boat at the time. He stopped teasing me about 3 hours in because I had my limit and was culling fish and he was still working on getting his second fish. It was my turn to laugh at him when I collected my money for winning the tournament.

Anyways, back to the hooks. Another trick is to take the hooks and bend the point shank slightly, where it is a little off center from the center shaft, remember the Excaliber rotating Trebel Hooks? I take pliers and grab the hook at the bottom of the bend and just kind of lean the tip to the left a little. Do this to all 3 points. What this does is makes it where the hooks get contact with the bass’s jaws a little better, the down side, it makes it a lot more difficult to fish around structure because they do get hung up more. Another up side is when the bass is jumping they can’t use the center shaft as leverage to get the hook loose. In my opinion the good points out weigh the bad.

Another lure modification worth doing is painting your own lures. Yes, you can spend high dollar and get lure with great finishes right out of the box but you can also get some lures out of the bargin Box and you local sporting goods counter and transform them into fish catching monsters.

Raid your wife’s fingernail polish, yeah I know, WHAT?? My wife has or should I say had this fingernail polish with fine hologram glitter in it. I looked closely at it one day as I was “reading the paper” in the rest room and noticed that it had glitter with allot of colors you would see on the expensive lures so I confiscated it and tried it out. On a side note, if your not experienced in applying this stuff make sure you try it out on something first because it can be a bear getting it off of a plastic or wood lure once you put it on. Go as thin as possible because you don’t want to put to much on one side and throw the lure’s balance off, making it run sideways in the water. Most of the time you want your lure to run true, I’ll go into when you don’t want it to in another article.

Take the red fingernail polish and paint little red gills on your lure, where the gills would normally be, again, be careful not to glob it on. My wife didn’t have black so I had to buy some but I use black to paint that little round dot that shad have on their sides on my shad colored lures.

Dress your treble hooks. Make them look like little tails. You can buy them pre made or you can make them for considerably less. Make sure you start out with good quality hooks. Hold off on bending the points like I described above, this will make the wrapping process so much easier. Trust me, I speak from experience here. Get some mylar strips cut very thin and wrap them with red thread just under the hook eye and put a dab of clear finger nail polish to hold the end down. You would be amazed how this looks in the water.

Do all of these things help? As long as you believe they will work then they will work. Just remember, there is no magic bullet, there is no such thing. All those late night info-mercials are a joke. Let me rephrase that, there is a magic lure, It’s the one you truly believe will catch fish. The one you have confidence in. The one that you know in your mind will catch em because you will take the time and effort to figure out just how to present it to get them to bite that day.

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

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Swim Baits

There are a variety of swim baits currently on the market, ranging from small shad imitations to trout baits. The trout baits generally imitate stocked trout, which at least in California are a big bass staple. These trout looking lures range in size from 5 to 18 inches and resemble a rainbow trout.

Believe it or not but out here in the land of Giant bass you can ALWAYS be sure that many of the largest bas in the lake will make their home somewhere close to the boat ramp. No, not to ambush sleepy bass fishermen launching their boats but they do stay in the area to ambush something.Speaking from my own personal observations I know for a fact that bass get “In Tune” to the sound of the trout stock truck. Hold on, I know what your thinking “Mike, you’ve spent way to much time in the sun and you’ve gone crazy” Hear me out.Over the years, back before I got my first bass boat, I can remember sitting on the dock fishing, have the stock truck pull up and as it sat preparing to dump its load the big bass start to appear out of nowhere, this is well before the first trout hits the water. Then as the trout were being dumped the carnage begins, DINNER IS SERVED!Here these poor trout are stunned from the ride, not knowing what is going on, dumped into the lake where they are considered Candy to the bass.I remember trying all kinds of different lures at these monster bass in an attempt to get them to bite to no avail. They were 100% focused on the trout.

During this same time frame I talked to several other fellow anglers who had witnessed the same phenomenon at other lakes so I knew it was not some kind of fluke.

I covered allot of the history of trout swim baits as well as rigging techniques in “My Personal Quest For Trophy Bass” post so I don’t think I need to do it again. One thing I didnt mention was if you see trout “porpising” on the surface, running scared cast your trout there. Chances are Mr. Trout is being chased by a big nass wanting to make a meal out of him.

Then we have a whole array of different swim baits. There are the Shad looking, Sunfish looking, Bass Looking models. Shallow diving, deep diving, suspending and sinking ones. We have the soft plastic, hard plastic ones, part hard part soft ones and wooden ones.

A person could easily spend their kids inheritance trying to buy everything out there but as a basic rule follow the K.I.S.S rule, (Keep It Simple Stupid). If you can afford one of each, do it. If not some soft shads, soft sunfish and soft bass in the 3-5 inch variety should be sufficient.

As a general rule of thumb these lures are not as big as the trout imitators so they don’t require the magnum tackle one would use with the trout lures. However depending on the size of the lures stout tackle will still be needed.

Some tips on how and when to use each swim bait are as follows. When? Anytime of the year, of course you need to factor in several variables when selecting which one.

During spring the sunfish would be a good choice. Bass will be protecting beds from sunfish so this would be a good search bait on flats around spawning grounds.

During summer the bass would be a good choice mainly because there will be allot of small bass swimming around from the spawn.

During late summer into fall the shad type lures will excel mainly because bass will be keying on them during this time of the year to fatten up for the winter when forage is not as readily available.

I’ve touched on the when, now I’ll touch on the how. What I do is keep a close eye on my electronics, looking for bait on structure, this is when good electronics come in handy. When I find the bait I’ll cast my lure out past the structure, let it sink to the desired depth and start my retrieve.

Remember to impart some erratic action, even if very subtle, to make your offering look like its injured, bass by instinct will always pick off the injured ones first, its in their genetic makeup.

Another tip is to watch for balls of shad suspending. These can also be seen on good electronics as a big gray ball. Watch the shore line for activity, “dimples” on the surface could be sunfish or shad feeding. This would be a good place to make a cast.

Try some of these tips on your next trip and you should have some success.

Until Next Time, Good Luck And Tight Lines To Ya!

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Senko Tips

Not too long back Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits released their version of the do nothing worm and they called it a Senko. (They can be purchased by clicking the Bass Pro Shops Link to the Right)