Monster Double Digit Bass Destroys a Swimbait!
If I had to choose just one way to target giant bass day in and day out, it would be the swimbait. Every year a variety of techniques put big bass in the boat but the most consistent option for the giants is the large swimbait.
On this day I had the pleasure of fishing with a close friend. We had put in a few hours already, catching just a few small bass on reaction baits in shallow water around grass. We had the choice of continuing to target those smaller fish or moving out to deeper water to try and get a big bass. We made the decision to move out and target the big females that were lurking on the ledges searching for easy meals.
On this particular day I used a Huddleston Deluxe 8" ROF 12 swimbait in Rainbow trout (there are no trout present in this lake but the bass don't care) and fished it with the stock jig hook. This allows me to work the bait through rocks without getting snagged on every cast.
On just the 3rd cast, the giant bit. It just goes to show that throwing a big swimbait doesn't mean you're going to have to throw it for hours, waiting for the bite. When big bass are feeding, big baits work. In many circumstances they work BETTER than their smaller counterparts.
This particular fish was sitting on the top of a rocky ledge that transitioned from 6 to 17 feet of water. I set the boat in the shallows and cast off the ledge into the deep water. Wanting to avoid nicking the line in the rocks, I began retrieving the swimbait before it hit the bottom. As the bait came close to the top of the ledge the bass came up out of the rocks and intercepted it, resulting in a very aggressive bite. As you can see, the rest played out very quickly.