How to Fish Swimbaits for Bass
Swimbait Fishing For Bass is used to catch the biggest bass in the lake. It can be strenuous and time-consuming, but it’s also one of the most satisfying accomplishments an angler can experience.
If you’re going after big bass, whether on your own or in a tournament, you will need patience and savvy. There’s a reason big bass grow so large. They’re wary and shrewd about what they bite.
Ironically, the versatility of swimbaits might be the thing that keeps some anglers from using them more often. With so many rigging options and variables for presentations, it seems hard to know where to begin. That said, soft swimbaits are highly effective and worth the effort to understand. Most fishing techniques are actually easy to execute.
Soft Body Swimbait in Action:
These soft lures can come fully rigged, or you can rig them yourself on weighted hooks or jig heads. These lures are meant to be cast out and reeled in slowly.
You can let them sink a little below the surface on the retrieve. With a hard body swimbait, you’d have to worry about the hard casing snagging on something below the surface.
These lures have a tail that resembles a kayak paddle and creates some killer swim action. Paddle tails are excellent for fishing in the weeds, where some bass like to hide.
You’ll have to buy hooks to rig onto these lures. Make sure the hook you choose fits the body shape of the lure. Pick your performance fishing gear to match your expedition, choose your lures and corresponding hooks to suit the habitat.
Hard Body Swimbait in Action:
The lures with hard bodies have two to six segments connected by hinged joints. These lures can be handcrafted or made by a machine, and they have a variety of buoyancies.
If you’re wondering how to fish a swimbait in place of other lures. Use hard swimbaits the same way you would topwater plugs. They’re superb for covering larger bass habitats, like points, flats or humps.
When you cast bigger hard swimbaits, they tend to make a considerable splash. A big splash will attract some bass and spook others. If a bass thinks it noticed a small fish jumping, you’re in luck. Unfortunately, a splash will scare others away.
These lures are usually rigged with treble hooks. Avoid using them in weedy areas because you might lose the lure.
Where you should use Swimbait Fishing For Bass:
You can fish Swimbait Fishing For Bass just about anywhere and everywhere. Above grass, around wood, scattered pads, open water, docks, and even for smallmouth. Generally, “I fish them in less than twelve feet of water. I have however, caught schoolers over open water in forty-plus feet”. They are great from pre-spawn right through the fall.
Equipment:
Medium-Heavy action rod in the 7’3″ to 7’6″ range is ideal. Once you step up to the larger 7-10″ glide-baits and swimbaits, it is important to use a Heavy action rod to handle the increased weight of these larger baits. A 6.4:1 gear ratio is ideal to maintain the perfect swimming action and to not pull away from fish as they to attack and eat the bait. As far as line goes, fluorocarbon in the 17-20 pound test range is ideal to keep the bait down in the water column and give a true swimming action, as opposed to monofilament or braided line, which will cause the bait to rise towards the surface on the retrieve.
Tip:
Some of the coolest experiences in bass fishing can be had with big swimbaits because they will expose a lot of big bass you might not otherwise see. But it would be a lie to say it’s all cool stories all the time. There can be a lot of frustration with hunting bigger bass with big swimbaits and lot of near misses that make you question what you are doing.
Lee offers these tips when Swimbait Fishing For Bass.
- Super long casts: This seems fairly obvious but these baits are massive, they make big splashes but they also can get your lure a lot farther away from your boat that most lures on heavy duty equipment.
- Better angles: “I tell people if it’s a pain in the rear to get your boat set up there, it’s probably the right way to fish the spot for a trophy,”
- Get into position better: Be adamant about getting into position but being stealthy. Try getting up speed on the trolling motor and then coast into position before making a cast.
- Control the stall: Try pairing a medium fast spinning rod with 20 pound Berkley FireLine for skipping around docks. Skipping with spinning gear is easier than with casting gear. The low-stretch line is essential for pressuring fish before they wrap around dock posts and other obstructions.
- Break up: You will find that breaking up the silhouette of everything seems to help with swimbaits. I have had followers in one area, bite on a different day when the conditions changed. Maybe I had a follow on a slick sunny day. Then I came back a day or two later and it was cloudy or a little wind that broke up what was above the surface more and concealing you from the fish much better.
By using your distance, boat position, and angle, you give yourself more room to work a swimbait, pause it, kill it, twitch it and otherwise stall it in the strike zone to elicit a reaction from a bass without getting too close to your boat and putting them on guard to your presence.
If you’re not using this versatile big fish catching bait, you are missing out. Swimbaits can be used in a variety of situations and are effective almost all year. They are exceptionally effective during the pre-spawn when bass are looking for an easy meal. Tie one on and give it a try this year, you will be glad you did.
“Catch The Dream!”
