Best Bass Bait this year—Year In Review

Ok I’m not done I was out last week but only caught pike-If you have caught bass recently how and where? Otherwise this year what was a good producer?
Thanks

Smallies over north metro miss they loved the parrot colored scatter rap. Troll rocks,riprap and game on. Nothing huge but good action for the kiddos.

The Senko always has and always will be my best bait

Been tough for me the last week or so. Just have to SLOW down, which has never been a strength of mine. Jigs, Tubes, dropshot, Ive even been playing with spybaiting.

I caught bass on 85 different lures this year with the top 3 being:
128 on Tru Tungsten Mad Maxx Frog
120 on a Craw Tube (I use about 4 or 5 different brands)
102 on a Shower Blows 105 knock off I got on eBay.

My top lure type was topwaters with 602 bass(anything on top,but a buzzbait which has it’s own category on Fish Swami). My second best lure type was a jig with 240 fish caught. A bladed swim jig probably made up 75% of that catch.

My last Bass outing was a few weeks ago. All bass on that outing were caught on a slowly fished Rapala Shaddow or a jigworm. Overall for the season the #1 was probably a Jigworm. #2 was a dropshot. My guess is that 90% of my bass caught this summer was on those 2 baits.

This year my best producer was the ned rig, with a black plastic rigged on it. this lasted until the end of July. Since then I struggled to find a lure that would consistently produce. I mostly fished on Mille Lacs, i believe the smallies moved and I wasn’t able to find them again.

I’m a walleye fisherman And caught more bass this year. Next year I’m going to declare myself a bass fisherman and we’ll see what happens

I’d probably say a jig worm and drop shot were my top two baits also. Which is really weird because I’ve never fished a regular ol’ jig worm before. Caught a lot of nice largemouth this year on z drop shot Berkley Bottom Hopper

This year there were 3 new lures I spent a lot of time with:
• Caffeine Shad skipped under docks with baitcasting equipment and heavier line than spinning so I could horse the bigger ones out easier. What a great dying/swimming action these have on the Fall! Started using Sunline FC Flippin’ line in 16 lb test. Check out the coloration on this line. Eliminates the extra knot in tying a Fluorocarbon leader to braid. More abrasion resistant than braid and it sinks more uniformly to give the Caffeine Shad that extra tail action.
• I started using Keitech swimbaits… where I used to pitch Heavy jigs into foil, cabbage and pads – I started Texas rigging a 5 inch Keitech Easy Shiner but with a flippin’ hook. I got less weeds than I typically do with a regular jig, and I got a better hook up ratio than I usually do with traditional swimbait hooks. It was an experiment but I think I will continue again next year.
• I finally joined the Whopper Plopper bandwagon. They aren’t a silver bullet but I found them to work at times when nothing else did.. they can be so deadly with spectacular topwater explosions!! High entertainment value

I went thru a lot of Missle D-bombs this year. Black/Blue and Blue/Green Pumpkin. T-rigged and tossed around cover/weedlines.

Fry you ever give the LiveTarget Sunfish a try?

I can’t wait for the ponds to start getting going again down here. I haven’t had a ton of time to fish, but they should be active again by now. It’s been pretty slow. I noticed that the baitfish around the shore are plentiful, but littler than I expect this time of year. Also the drought has been followed up with record rains from the summer and Irma, which can’t be helping.

Pinky toes

mplspug wrote:

Fry you ever give the LiveTarget Sunfish a try?

I actually did – first time out I think I caught two decent largemouth in about 20 minutes. And I was 2/2 on hook ups… should have stayed with it. For whatever reason, I switched back to a frog and didn’t catch anything. A couple weeks later I went back out and threw the frog again because it was still tied on. Had 2 blowups and missed both. Should have gone back to the sunfish. But about that time frame I thought I needed to jump on the Whopper Plopper bandwagon and didn’t go back to the pads.

It was a year of experimenting – but next year I’ll definitely go back to the sunfish and use it more consistently. Thx for the recommendation, it’s not a gimmick – –

I’ll be jumping on the whopper plopper bandwagon in a few months when they start schooling up attacking the baitfish on the bank.

The one pond has a nice number of 2 year old class bass coming up. They are schooling in the dead lily pads. I only hooked up with one. I could have watched them all morning. One jumped clean out of the water like a dolphin.

What? No one mentioned NED? or TRD?

Best lure for my year was the Strike King KVD 2.5 squarebill crank. It is every year. Best crank on the market imo. The wobble is perfect and I catch more bass on it than any other lure in my boat. Can thrown it on docks, over the tops and through weed lines, bang it off of structure. It’s awesome.

2.5’s are a great bait. I never used the 1.5’s much, but found out they work great too, especially in clearer water towards the end of this years season. Just can’t cast them as far in the wind.

Luck E Strike RC Stx 4.5″, Emerald Shiner pattern – Some devastating pre-spawn action including a 140 bass day on ML, along with 26 bonus walleyes. Change the hooks before using them or suffer lost fish. The stock hooks are very substandard and will straighten/break easily. Replace with #5 Gami round bend trebles.

Honorable Mention…Zoom, 4.75″ Finesse Worm, pumpkin, fished weightless and wacky style on #2 VMC Neko hook, with 6′ flouro leader attached to hi-vis braid. Cast to spooky fish and let soak, as in deadstick. It’s better than live bait.

When the water is warm, a half drank can of bud light with a #8 gold treble hook attached. This works well when I chuck it under docks.

When the water is colder I use a empty can of coors light (because the mountains turn blue) with a #8 red treble hook. This is my best top water proudcer.

Black/Blue jig with d-bomb trailer. KVD 2.5 gill color. Dropshot. Jigworm

Buzz wrote:

TRD

I’ve been trying a little finesse with the TRD and haven’t had much luck yet. I thought it would be perfect in the hot months when the bass are dragging. Even now it should be a great option for me since the baitfish are still pretty small and there are a tone of seminole killifish which look just like a TRD.

I jumped on the TRD bandwagon too… walleyes, pike, sunfish, perch, rock bass, bullheads, and of course bass

Also started throwing chatterbaits. Nuff said