Soft bait a sure lure for ‘smallies’ Bass attracted to plastic

As much as I enjoy casting for trout and salmon, more and more each summer I look forward to fishing for smallmouth bass. Referred to as bronzebacks, black bass, smallies and other nicknames by devoted anglers, this acrobatic, aerobatic, hard-fighting species always battles twice as hard as its actual size and doesn’t know the meaning of quit. Best of all, when warm, muggy weather and rising water temperatures put other game fish off their feed, smallmouths get even more active. Late July, August and even September during warm years, yield consistent bronzeback action on regional lakes and streams, so good that even youngsters and novice bass casters enjoy regular attention from this lively, leaping quarry.

Each outing in quest of Mr. Black usually turns out to be a learning experience however, and smart fishermen remember and file away these lessons in their memory banks to assure future success. Perpetual rains since early spring have certainly cast a pall over most fishing exploits and smallmouth enthusiasts have really had to scramble and pick some tricks out of their fishing caps to enjoy a semblance of regular success. In many instances, it has been soft plastic baits that have saved the day during a time period when fly-rod poppers and deer-hair bugs, or hard plastic surface baits, are usually the sure-fire fish takers.

Try a tube

A couple of summers ago I got my first real insight into the effectiveness of soft baits. Other than casting a plastic grub on a jig head and gold spinner once in a while, my formative seasons of bass fishing had been mostly dependent on suspending and surface plugs and, of course, fly-rod bugs and poppers. Two years ago, about my fifth summer as a bass caster, two days of steady rain caused an extreme rise in the Penobscot and the river was the color of day-old coffee. Dave Ash of Ashland, my mentor in smallmouth tactics, and I had already hauled his bass boat for an hour and a half to the launch ramp when we became aware of the adverse conditions.

Since even poor fishing is better than no fishing, we loaded our gear in the boat, launched and began casting as the electric motor guided us along the rocky shoreline. I tried two sizes of Heddon Torpedos, a Zara Spook, a Pop-R, a Skitter Pop, a Wiggle Wort, a Jitterbug and a Hula Popper and got only two tentative strikes in an hour of casting.

Dave had caught and released five bass, one a feisty 3-pounder, using a variety of soft plastic worms, eels and shad, of which I had none in my tackle box. Since I couldn’t coax any surface action, my next step was to delve the depths, so I tried a Rattling Rap, a Rebel crawfish, a Rattle Shad and a suspending Bomber. I actually boated two moderate size bass for all my efforts, while my fishing partner hooked a half-dozen and got four to boatside; and Dave wasn’t casting more than 20 feet from the boat.

I’d already burned up two feet of line changing plugs and was rummaging through my tackle box and mumbling unkind sentiments regarding bass when Dave took pity on me. He dug out a pumpkin seed-colored tube jig, which looked like a mini squid to me, and demonstrated how to insert a weighted jig head and explained how to fish a tube bait. Tube jigs are allowed to sink to the bottom and then using rod- tip action and a slow retrieve the bait is hopped in small arcs back toward the angler. Best of all, when properly rigged, tubes are totally weedless and can be fished among grass, weed beds, rocks and other structure without fetching up.

To prove his point we motored to a dense floating weed bed at midstream and stopped right alongside. Dave instructed me to toss my new, soft bait several feet into the dense waterborne green salad. I must have looked at him like he was crazy because he assured me that was the style for fishing tubes, so I tossed the tube and waited for it to sink. Following verbal prompts, I gently lifted the rod tip and reeled in a turn of line to bounce the bait a few inches. On my second lift, much to my surprise something pulled back, so I instinctively applied pressure and caught my very first bass on a tube jig.

For the rest of that outing Dave and I caught fish on a semi-regular basis, all on tubes. I would try other hard baits once in awhile, with few results, so I kept going back to the funny-looking hollow tube with tentacles. Needless to say, several styles and colors of soft- and hard-nose tube baits have become a big part of my tackle box inventory. For those not familiar with tube jigs, visit the local sporting goods stores and stock up. Set 21/2 inches as the smallest size for smallies and 4 inches as the largest, and select smoke with red flake, watermelon/chartreuse, green pumpkin seed/orange, and cinnamon with purple flecks as starting color combinations.

More creepy crawlies

Since that first beneficial exposure to soft bass baits, I’ve experimented and increased my stockpile of plastic imitation creepy, crawly bronzeback tidbits. Let’s discuss counterfeit terrestrials first, such as grubs, worms, lizards, snakes, caterpillars and centipedes. In order of consistent productivity, worms top the list of bass hors d’ouevres. Select 7- to 8-inch specimens in black, motor oil, or red shad for sure-fire action, and use a Texas rig setup with a 3/0 hook and a 1/4- to 1/2-ounce bullet weight for 6- to 15-foot depths. In shallower water along shorelines or among structures, try a 6-inch worm with football jighead at the nose. This setup, called the Shaky Head, lets the worm’s head rest on bottom after each twitch but the tail floats and wiggles enticingly.

Grubs are my second line of offense with 5-inch being my favorite and 31/2-inch my second choice. Curly tail styles have proven more effective than double-tail, skirted or other odd tail configurations, and an eighth-ounce black jighead with a yellow eye or chartreuse with a red eye on red Gamakatsu work fabulously. As to color, it’s hard to go wrong with pumpkin seed, white, watermelon tinsel and pumpkin with a chartreuse tail.

For fishing around spawning beds and when water is notably off-color, bottom-crawling a lizard will really stir up the smallies. Using a Carolina rig with rattle beads attracts strikes by sound as well as sight, and burying the hook point in the lizard body makes the bait weedless in any thick vegetation or brush pile. Soft-formed plastic in the detailed legs and tail give a bottom-bumping, or even a swimming salamander, striking realism of motion. Hard-nose and soft-nose lizards are available and sure-fire colors include pumpkin and pepper, chartreuse head/pumpkin body, black, and watermelon.

Action aquatics

Shad, crayfish, eels and frogs are another line of soft baits that should be on hand to tempt black bass. Eel imitations are fairly simplistic in form, kind of like a fat, tapered worm bait, the best known name brand being Slug-Go. They are rigged and fished just like worms, snakes and grubs. Salt and Pepper, Black/Blue flash, Alewife and red shad are dependable colors.

Soft-body shad baits are meant to resemble the glass minnow, a delicacy for many freshwater fish. Prism eyes, multicolored gel and a holographic finish are the trademarks of top-of-the line shad models, and some even have hinged or jointed bodies to add further realism. These are the most expensive of soft plastic baits, some priced at $10 apiece, but by far the most articulated and natural. Proven colors include speckled glass, mullet, pinfish, fire tiger and alewife.

My most consistent aquatics are frogs, which I fish floating or swimming in five feet or less of water, and crawfish, which I use in depths up to 10 feet and work right on, or less than a foot above, the bottom. Both are rigged weedless, the frog to move forward and the crawfish to swim backwards, each in jumps and spurts. Green pumpkin, white-spotted, root beer pepper/green and leopard frog are prime shades for plastic frogs and the most appetizing crawdad colors seem to be pumpkin, black with red glitter, green pumpkin with orange flecks and motor oil neon.

All the soft plastic baits I’ve mentioned come in a vast array of shades and in many color combinations. Most are used on a variety of game fish with great success but more often than not they are bass lures; largemouth, striped, spotted or peacock and, of course, smallmouth. Although they will work on other species, the colors, sizes and styles I’ve mentioned are prime, proven baits for Maine smallies. Even if you fill a small suitcase with 50 other colors and shapes, only a handful will work day after day in all water and weather conditions.

Tasty, too

No matter how realistic a soft bait looks and moves, add a scent to appeal to a bass’s acute sense of smell and effectiveness increases dramatically. Larger bass have a more refined sense of smell and better developed olfactory organs, which makes them more susceptible to attractive scents. Most bass won’t travel a long distance to take a lure, even a scented one, but even inactive bass will be roused into striking when a bait that looks and smells like prey is fairly close.

Commercial sprays, dropper bottles, dips and even gels to be rubbed into the soft baits are readily available from several well-known fishing gear companies. Some scents encourage a feeding response, while others exude a pheromone which incites an attack. Several formulas include a masking scent for amino acid L-serine, a chemical secreted from human hands that’s very offensive to bass and is transferred to plastic baits when they are handled. Apply these scents regularly and smallmouth action will improve.

More and more soft bait manufacturers are taking scents a step further and actually impregnating the plastic with scented chemicals that are released into the water. Garlic, live baitfish enzymes, and flavored salt are three of the most common bass-attracting additives. All of these water-soluble products leave a fish-tantalizing scent trail as they are worked through the water, and most last at least 30 minutes.

Try a bottle of garlic Bass Gravy, Chompers Formula G in anise or Lunker Sauce in Shad flavor for add-on liquid scents. Top-rate soft baits that come already salted or scented that should be in every bass tackle box include Berkley Gulp, YUM, and Gary Yamamoto custom baits, each of which comes in more than a dozen shapes and more than 50 color combos.

Think soft, shapes, sizes, and scents when stocking up on bass baits and when lures, hard plastic divers, spinner baits and surface plugs won’t work, you’ll still catch smallmouth. It’s prime time right now on local lakes and rivers with almost two months of bass casting left to be enjoyed; carry a limber stick and cast a soft bait.

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com