There’s a lot of baits that will catch a bass but some of them are a lot more user-friendly bass baits than other ones. Now what I mean by user-friendly is they don’t require a lot of skill to have some success.
I’m going to talk to you about three of those baits today.
You can’t talk about user-friendly bass baits folks without talking about lipless crankbaits. With lipless crankbaits there’s a wide variety of brands out there.
This particular model is the War Pig. It’s a new bait by Berkley. Like other lipless crank it rides nose down in the water column. It’s basically built to chunk and wind. You can fish it over open water or up shallow around hydrilla beds. Just chunk it, wind it and hold on tight.
Another bait that’s really easy to fish that’s ultra deadly on fish of all sizes is a soft jerk bait. Folks, there’s a lot of these out there as well but you really you can’t go wrong with the Yamamoto Senko in a green pumpkin black flake pattern. This is a do-nothing looking worm that really comes to life when you stab it with a hook. There’s a variety of ways to rig this bait. The most common way is to Texas rig it. You can rig this bait weightless or with a light weight and just throw it out there twitch it and the bait just floats around in the water column. Really attracts some good strikes.
Another common way to rig it is wacky style. This is basically hooking it through the egg sack and the bait just just free hangs. Throw it out and you can just twitch it right over over around shallow grass bushes. Man, those bass will come out and whack it.
The next bait I want to talk about isn’t really a bait it’s a rig. It’s the Carolina rig. This bait has won a lot of money in bass tournaments over the years, folks. It works great around scattered cover, rocks and stuff up and in fairly open water. It’s basically a Texas rig—plastic—but you don’t have the weight down around the bait. Instead the weight is staged up ahead of the bait. You can stage it anywhere from 2 feet to 5 feet, however you want to do it.
There are a couple of different ways to stage the bait I like to use what’s called a Carolina keeper and it’s basically a little plastic cylinder that slides on your line ahead of the hook. You have to squeeze the the little cylinder together to make it slide up and down the line.
You really need to be careful with these though folks because they will fray your line if they happen to slide up and down it when they’re tight. Just keep an eye on your line. I really recommend using 20-pound line if you’re using a Carolina keeper.
The other way to do it and probably the safest overall—and it’s been a longtime favorite—is to use a swivel. Just use a basic barrel swivel. Tie off at both ends. Put the weight ahead of the top of the swivel and then your leader at the bottom side
You use these three baits, they’re easy to fish, and I promise you you’ll catch more fish if you’ll give them a try.
Matt Williams is Freshwater Fishing Editor for Texas Fish & Game.
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