What color swimbait should you choose?

Across the nation bass feed on a variety of prey species. Swimbait manufactures were quick to pick up on this and produce baits to match nearly any forage available to bass. On a typical store shelf you can find swimbaits that match everything from a rat, to a trout, to a goby. Without direction your only real option is to buy them all and see what works for you.
The good news is I already did the hard work for you! Over the last 10 years I’ve purchased nearly every swimbait to hit the market (with few exceptions) and have tried them in a dizzying array of colors. I’ve compiled all of that information into this quick video. I don’t cover every bait but I have a few quick tips that will help you select the right color for your situation.
You don’t need box after box of swimbaits, stick to the basics and you’ll do just fine. In fact, you’ll usually do better than the guy who spends all day digging through his boxes looking for the “magic” bait.

What swimbait colors do you have confidence in? Have your best days been on the realistic colors of some of the more extreme options? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Simple Swimbait Modifications

You don’t have to spend more than a couple days on Clearlake (or most other lakes) in the Spring to realize that, 1) you should be wearing a hard hat while you fish with as close together as all the boats get. 2) that the fish are beginning to see TONS of swimbaits. And 3) that you need to do something to stand out from the crowd. There are all sorts of modifications you can make to a bait but here are a couple simple ones that can be completed in a matter of minutes to make your bait unique. This video shows how to add gills and front fins to a Huddleston Deluxe 8″ trout but it can be applied to any swimbait to help you get more bites, even under pressured conditions.

Would you like to see other modifications? Let me know via the contact page or comments  and I’ll get the camera rolling. Enjoy!

Which swimbait should you choose?

Has anyone else noticed that there are 10 or 20 times the number of swimbaits on the market today than there were 5 years ago? Some of the biggest “brand name” baits in the industry have only existed for a year or two.  What is an angler to do? You can buy every last one of them in order to see which ones consistently catch fish and which ones don’t but then there is no money left to put in the gas tank. A boat full of baits and no where to go sure won’t help you get bit!  At the request of several anglers I put this video together to shed a little light on which baits work. Forget the hype, forget all the talk about which bait is better. I’m sharing with you a handful of the baits that consistently help me put big fish in the boat, in every season of the year. These aren’t the only baits I use but these are the baits that are widely available and that I firmly believe will get bit coast to coast, day in and day out.

Has this been your experience? Are you one of those guys that lives and dies with a hardbait in your hand? Feel free to leave a comment and let me hear your thoughts. I don’t claim to be the best or to know it all but these are the baits I love to fish. If you take the knowledge in this video and apply it to your time on the water, big things are sure to come.

Glimpse at a 42 lb limit

Some days you launch the boat and the world just feels right. You can sense that something epic is coming. The clouds are just right, there is a ripple on the water, and the water temperature seems perfect for big fish.
On this particular day I had that feeling. That is, until 3 hours had gone by and we didn’t have a fish in the boat! 3 big bites down, no fish! It was starting to look like a disaster until my partner got one to the net.

Isn’t it amazing how one fish can turn a whole day around? It seemed like all was lost until a single fish connected and made it to the net. Then it was game on! I apologize for the dark pictures but we caught fish so consistently we didn’t bother to take their picture until it was dark and the bite had stopped.

Here is a quick video giving a glimpse into a livewell full of largemouth! These fish were caught on a variety of lures. At this point I’m not even sure what fish ate what baits. Fish were caught on a homemade 7″ boot tail swimbait, 6″ injected lunker punker, super spook, Snagproof frog, and Yamamoto Senko.

The fish were actually incredibly simple to catch. They had moved up in very shallow water along a reed and chunk rock bank. We spent most of the day casting parallel to shore and working the baits in 2 to 10 feet of water.