By Andrew Ragas

At the end of every season, I reveal the secret baits that caught the most fish for me. Now that my 2016 bass fishing season has concluded, we glance back at the dominating baits and presentations that screamed success for big fish. Revisiting the old standbys, and revealing some new.

I’m a part time Wisconsin fishing guide at Northwoods Bass Fishing Adventures and specialize in smallmouth bass fishing. I have to be on the top of my game daily, and my only requirement in fishing lures is they better catch fish for my guests and I! At any given time, I keep up to 10 rods rigged and ready with an assortment of fish catchers at my Ranger’s front deck….. along with another 10 or so below in its rod locker. A diversified lure selection like this will help not only make you a more versatile angler, but allow you to catch more fish and be prepared for the called upon presentation.

Prime patterns and favorite lures can be revisited each year, especially as the environment and behaviors of smallmouth bass dictate their locations and influence their feeding habits. Each year a few annual constants remain, but new discoveries and techniques succeed in the underwater world below me.

As any observant and scientific-minded angler can conclude, the success you have with your favorite lures and technique-specific methods depends on weather and water conditions, fish locations, and habitats. On the lakes and rivers you fished throughout 2016, what were some of your favorite and most productive methods to catch big fish throughout the year?

Here’s mine….. in no particular order.

Dynamic Lures Travado

The Dyamic Lures Travado is a short lip jerkbait that suits best for shallow to mid depth presentations. In my neck of the woods, it tends to fish best when water temperatures are between 45 to 60 degrees, so spring and fall. With an average diving depth of 3 to 5 feet, it casts like a bullet at 3/8 oz with medium heavy action casting gear with 10 and 12 lb. copolymers. I’ve been using the Travado in spring and fall in colder water temperatures as a search bait to find where the feeding wolfpacks of smallmouths are located and aggressive power fishing techniques must be employed. I fish suspending jerkbaits about 50% of the time and always have at least a few different types tied onto my rods year-round. My favorites are Ghost Fish, Holo Gold, and Chartreuse Shad. In 2016, Dynamic Lures products caught smallmouths up to 20 inches.

Nothing is worse than having trophy fish come unpinned from weak and dull treble hooks. For best results, replace factory hooks with Trokar Tk300 round bend treble hooks.

Rapala Shadow Rap 11

The Rapala Shadow Rap combines both the vertical and horizontal struggles that a minnow exhibits when frightened before predator. Sculpted with flat-sides, the Rapala Shadow Rap delivers a compact wobble, and erratic darting action with minimal forward movement, so it can maintain a consistent depth within the fish’s strike zone. Internally, the Rapala Shadow Rap is equipped with a fixed weighting system, which works like a minnow’s swim bladder, allowing it to sink with a slow-falling quiver – just like a dying baitfish. This also allows for long casting distances when fished with 8 and 10lb lines on both spinning and casting gear.

Throughout 2016, I exclusively fished the Shadow Rap 11 with medium heavy baitcasting gear and 10lb line. Long casts, coupled with erratic jerks and long pauses resulted in some of the best strikes experienced all season from spring thru fall. Although similar but entirely different, the Shadow Rap 13, a deep diver was experimented by friends and I and used successfully for jerk trolling and open water strolling applications. Keep the 11 for fishing depths shallower than 8 feet (rock bars, shallow flats, etc), and have the size 13 handy for depths greater (open water, deep weedlines).

The Shadow Rap comes with a trio of razor-sharp VMC trebles, but I recommend swapping them in favor of Trokar Tk300 round bend treble hooks.

Rapala Cranking Rap 05

I am a power fishing fanatic. Just like it did in 2013, 2014, and 2015, Rapala’s Cranking Rap accounted for the most, and my largest bass of the season, again measuring up to 21 inches. It excelled in early spring during the prespawn stage, early summer during the post spawn stage, mid-summer along major feeding shelves, and in early fall as crayfish presence was still prevalent. Under most circumstances I use a crankbait to search out cover and structure, looking for a reaction bite yet at the same time covering water in search for actively feeding fish. I don’t fish them slowly as one normally would with a fiberglass rod and a lower gear ratio reel. Rather, I power my way to ferocious strikes with speed and power.

The loud Cranking Rap is an absolute favorite for night fish, which I do almost nightly during the months of July and August. I start each night on habitat-rich shorelines and main lake flats that are known crayfish and smallmouth feeding grounds. I meticulously cover these areas by power cranking, fan-casting. As my most successful nighttime smallmouth lures to date, I have found these crankbaits to possess the loudest rattles and widest, most compact vibration. Both properties are critical to triggering strikes at night. For my power cranking approach, I put the traditional flexy crankbait rod and low gear ratio reel aside and fish with 7 ft medium to medium-heavy action Vexan Rods, and Quantum Tour Edition casting rods paired with Quantum Catalyst and Tour Edition PT reels with 6.3:1 and 7.3:1 gear ratios. This power gear is spooled with 10 to 14 lb Cortland Endurance monofilament and Camouflage copolymer lines.

The Crankin Rap comes with two rather dull VMC trebles. In order to keep fish pinned with the most minimal of hooksets, I strongly encourage immediately swapping them in favor of Trokar Tk300 round bend treble hooks.

Stankx Bait Company DS Squirtz

I don’t particularly like fishing the drop shot rig due to the number of small fish it quickly catches and accumulates. It takes a lot of sorting through small fish before a large fish eventually gets caught. Plus, my lakes aren’t very pressured therefore it’s a technique I seldom have to use. However, the dog days of summer in 2015, and again in 2016 call for some drop-shotting in order to get down to the 20+ foot depths of mid summer smallmouth. In July 2016, the drop shot rig outproduced everything in my boat, and caught smallmouths to 17″. It’s a numbers presentation, but not one I can fully trust when in pursuit of giants as some big fish get lost with the light line and light rod set up.

Drop shotting with Stankx Bait Company’s DS Squirtz, and any similar type of slender 4″ minnow or slug-like softbait accounted for most of my catch during the dog days in 2016. The DS Squirts was a new bait released in early 2015, and for reasons unknown I didn’t get my first supply of them until spring 2016.  The DS Squirtz tends to last between 1-3 fish depending on hook style used, so best bet is to order in bulk from Travis Crosman, and pay a little extra in bulk bags. When the bite is hot, I’ll readily go thru 10 to 20 squirtz per day. While the custom airbrushed colors are produced and preferred by most anglers, I prefer not to overwork the bait boss with custom requests and use his product as simply and affordably as I can.  I’ll get the most generic but natural colors he can quickly make for me in bulk. My favorite colors are diablo and ayuzilla.

Used exclusively for drop shotting and power shotting, the 4 inch DS Squirtz offers a natural baitfish profile, whose straight tail design darts and glides through the water with the slightest twitch of the rod. Slender and subtle, rigged with Trokar TK 180 Finesse Worm Hook (size 1/0), multiple bass can be caught on each bait.

Strike King Coffee Tube

The Strike King Coffee Tube is my favorite tube of all time. I fish my tube jigs utilizing one of two methods: Rigged with a swinging jig head, and a tube jig insert. As far as rigging the tube with swinging jig, the ability to swap out original factory hooks in favor of using a favorite brand and style is where the Freedom Lures Zodiac Jig wins me over. This is a concept many smallmouth bass anglers look for. While the chemically sharpened hooks available in original packaging with the jig are rightfully sharp, I modify the jig to my specifications, making it sharper and stronger to better withstand rocks and snags, by swapping out factory hooks in favor of preferred brands such as OWNER, Eagle Claw, and LazerTrokar. I then take further steps, matching hook type and size according to the soft plastics smallmouths want. When hooked, smallmouths are not able to use this tube jig as leverage when trying to shake free, thus more fish are landed.

Meanwhile for the tube insert, in 2016 I began fishing with the Big Bite Baits Tube Head Jigs, in 1/8 oz and 3/16 oz. available in packages of 5.

No other specific bait or rigging combination accounted for more smallmouth bass in 2016 than these two tube jig rigs. My favorite colors: Magic Goby / Crazy Craw. Perhaps it’s in the presentation, bait choice, or merely the angler knowing how to fish the entire package.

Stankx Bait Company 4.25 Jerx

Equally effective for smallmouths, and sometimes even better depending on fish activity levels, soft jerkbaits in the fluke style like the 4.25 inch Jerx by Stankx Bait Company can be fished with the same cadence as a hard jerkbait to draw strikes. I fish them May through October and it catches fish during all months of my open water season. It draws strikes from aggressive fish, but also triggers reluctant strikes from wary and conditioned fish. Soft jerkbaits like this will produce when the hardbait won’t. It’s important to work a soft jerkbait just as you would a hard jerkbait. Rigged weightless with a 3/0 Eagle Claw Trokar MagWorm with plastic barb keeper, which keeps it honest and gives it a slow sink, I make sure to pop the bait with a few upwards jerks and let it hang and glide slowly down a few feet in the water column. Smallmouths often slurp it and strike aggressively on the pause, and slow flutter downward. When it’s their time to be used, soft jerkbaits offer a greater hang time in strike zones and will always sink at a slow minimal rate. Additionally, they will offer livelier finesse action which I believe is what tempts conditioned fish and big and old experienced bronzebacks to strike. The soft jerkbait will often catch smallmouths from the same spots where the hardbait blew past them moments earlier, and will generate new strikes on conditioned fish. When the texas rig approach isn’t working, I will also vertically jig, or cast and rip jig the Stankx Jerx with a Northland Slurp Jig. In 2017, you may see me experimenting with a line-through treble hook presentation for increased bait durability, plus more hookups.

Finding and catching smallmouths with hard and soft jerkbaits isn’t only a visual presentation for fish, but it’s also a visual experience for anglers. Because the majority of my bites occur on slack line while the hardbait is suspending or softbait is on the glide downward, I always keep my eyes fixated on the top six inches of my rod throughout the entire retrieve. Regardless of light penetration and weather, it’s important to keep a watch on your line and the rod tip. Always fish this with spinning gear, 7ft medium heavy action spinning rod with reel spooled with 8 or 10 lb. copolymer. Trust me on the spinning gear, you will number up on so many smallies, beyond your wildest dreams.

Stankx Bait Company Damzel rigged with Owner Ultrahead Round Head Jig

From mid summer through early fall, I catch a number of quality smallmouth relating to weedlines and grass. Usually, the deepest edge of the weeds will hold them, as will a spot on a spot such as coontail or cabbage surrounding a rock pile or boulder. The method to this madness of mine is the perch pattern, and I preach it annually.

Juvenile perch migrations into vegetation don’t begin until water temps drop back to below 70. As the baitfish schools infiltrate the vegetation, smallmouths will move on and off these locations and follow suit. In recent years, the perch pattern is an overlooked strategy, and has been one of the most consistent big bass producers for me throughout late summer into mid October. When the perch schools are in weeds, it’s my second favorite way to tackle smallmouths in late summer and early fall – the first being power crankbaiting.

Paddle tails such as the Stankx Bait Co. Damzel rigged on 1/8 oz. Owner Ultrahead Round Head jigs and rip-jigged back to the boat are my favorites for this style of fishing. Stankx Bait Co. recently retired the Damzel in favor of an injected new plastic paddletail of theirs called the Sway. While Damzel requests will still be honored and accepted by custom order, the Sway looks like just as good of an option, if not more durable and more lively, for 2017 and onward.

Rip jigging the damzel through weedlines (where perch present) resulted in some of my best bass bites of the year in mid August, with fish to 21″ caught.

Long casts, let it swim and fall, jerk rod up and pump it through the grass when you feel it tick the tops. Huge strikes and drag pulls. But most importantly, the perch needed to be there for bass to be present. I fish this method with a 7ft 2″ medium heavy fast action Vexan Bass spinning rod, with a Quantum Energy PTi20 spinning reel. Spooled with 15 lb (4 lb. diameter) Cortland Masterbraid, with a 3 ft section of 10 lb. Seaguar Fluorocarbon, this setup is the bomb.

Unless foraging specifically for baitfish, or displaced by other gamefish species, smallmouths will seldom utilize weed habitat. But when they do, they’ll often conceal themselves in open pockets and along the fringe of the weedbed as they ambush unsuspecting perch schools.

Stankx Bait Company Dopplgangr

Sometimes the fish want nothing more than minimalist, do-nothing style plastic rigged with a football head and dragged along the bottom while drifting across the sand flat at half a mile per hour.

I guess we can call this finesse power fishing, and it’s entirely done with a 7ft medium heavy fast action spinning setup. Bomb cast, then drag and pound your plastics along the bottom as necessary. The quick flick of the wrists triggers strikes from angry smallmouths.

This summer and fall I enjoyed dragging the new 3.5″ Dopplgangr by Stankx Bait Company. I have no idea what softbait category this lure falls into, but it is reminiscent of the Poor Boy’s Erie Darter. To me, it’s definitely a goby and sculpin imitator, and certainly a leech imitator as well. I rig with a 3/16 oz. Northland Lip Stick Jig, a football head style in order to maintain bottom contact at all times, and make it power and pound the bottom.

Pounding and dragging these plastics accounted for good numbers of fish this summer, with some as large as 4 lbs. 

VMC Wacky Jig with 4.25 and 5.25″ Stankx Stix

The jig and wacky worm was one of summer’s top producers for action. It is the ultimate fish catcher. Fished within rock piles, along the edges of sand bars, and crawled through and over wood and laydowns, the VMC wacky weedless jig paired with a 5.25″ Stankx Bait Co. Stix caught fish from everywhere, June through September.

I came across the VMC wacky weedless jig for the first time in April. After purchasing my first 4-pack, an order for 10 more soon followed. Exceptionally strong and durable, it easily pins fish and has an attractive, chip-resistant finish. I fish my wacky rigs exclusively on 7ft medium heavy action spinning set-ups, and will never rig my bait without a rubber O-ring. This is to hopefully prolong and extend the life of the stick bait  so it may last beyond 1 fish only. In 2016, the wacky jig accounted for tremendous numbers of quality smallmouth and largemouth bass. I repeat again, my entire stock for the year was nearly depleted.

Bad news Bears – Travis Crosman recently retired the 4.25″ and 5.25″ Stix, both sizes I use frequently for wackys, texas rigging, and jig worming. Despite the downer news, I will keep requesting for my favorite stix in original stock colors as my stock from 2016 has nearly depleted itself: Green Pumpkin; HGH leech; Little John Special; Molting Craw; Diablo.

Freedom Tackle Corp. Hydra Ultra-Light with 5″ Kalins Lunker Grub

The swimming grub is what started the smallmouth obsession for me. I learned to catch my first smallmouth bass with the swimming grub and this is a tactic I still heavily rely on for year-round success for not only action, but big fish. Tie on a 3 to 5 inch grub, rig it with your jig head of choice, and cast it out. This year’s favorite jig turned out to be the Freedom Tackle Hydra Ultra Light, a 1/8 oz. darter style swinging head with interchangeable hook that easily cuts through the water column with the slowest of retrieves. The hook I like to use with this combo is the Trokar TK 105 Big Nasty Worm Hook size 1/0. Instead of allowing the grub to work its way down into the rocks, this rig combination is best fished with a predominant slow swimming retrieve throughout the upper water column where fish feed up at the surface, or suspend.

Swimming the grub is a deadly finessed-down search bait, as well as a bait for enticing bites once fish are located. As you move along the shoreline, or cover the entire sand bar or rock flat, it is possible to cover the same amount of water that you would if you were fishing a spinnerbait. But instead, you are using a more subtle presentation.

With the swimming grub, matching the hatch is critical for success. Throughout the year I fished this head with a 5″ Kalins Lunker Grub – always in some type of translucent, natural color. Be sure the size and appearance of baitfish forage matches the size of the grub. Make sure the grub is compatible with the water clarity being fished. The simplicity of the swimming grub is what makes this combo work so well. The action of a curly tail grub such as the Kalins brand is plenty to entice a strike whether you are fishing lakes, rivers, creeks, or any waters inhabited by smallmouth bass. While I didn’t catch any big smallmouths on the swimming grub surpassing 20″, it resulted in my biggest largemouth bass of the year. Pictured below is a 21″ fish surpassing 6 lbs. For enticing action and catching this year’s PB, that’s why the grub and Hydra makes the list!

Chompers Skirted Twintail (Hula) Grub

Since 2009, the skirted twin tail grub, regarded as “hula grub,” has put more big smallmouth bass in my boat than anything else besides most of the aforementioned baits on this list. Best fished with a 3/16 oz. Owner bullet head weedless hook in rivers, or a football head such as my new favorite Northland Lip Stick Jig on lakes with depth and minimum snags, it is a deadly bait that represents bottom scurrying crayfish.

Nowadays, there are a lot of soft plastics brands that produce their own versions of the hula grub. Without question, my favorite is the Chompers skirted twin tail. They run on the expensive side of this lure category, $5.99-$7.99, but are durable, overloaded with scented garlic goodness, and reek so bad that smallmouth laugh at us by how bad they smell to us. A few years ago I learned a new trick from my friend and fellow smallmouth junkie, Johnny Amato. He recommends saving the used and torn up baits, placing them back into the original smelly packaging, and infusing them again with a combination of homemade garlic and coffee extract. He then lets them cook inside the bag for a few weeks. This combination, he says, reinvigorates the busted baits to performing again, regardless of their deformities and torn appendages.

Rapala X-Rap Pop 

Topwaters and surface baits, longtime bass fishing staples at night, are popular for smallmouths. They are hard to beat when surface activity is prevalent, the lakes are heating up from the sunlight above, and insect hatches take place. When either of these conditions are in play, topwaters often get eaten quickly, and generate vicious strikes. One particular surface lure I have enjoyed fishing with these last few seasons is the Rapala X-Rap Pop. From the early June spawning period through early September, the X-Rap Pop is a fish catcher during low-light conditions and windless days. Take note – I’ve observed it excels best in periods of high humidity, and engages some of the largest smallmouth in the system to strike and connect. The more obnoxious and loud your pops, the more strikes it triggers.

For best execution with this surface bait, I fish it exclusively with a 7 ft medium heavy action Quantum Tour Edition PT rod paired with a Quantum Energy PT casting reel, 7.0;1 gear ratio spooled with 12 lb Cortland Camo line, a low stretch copolymer. The fast gear ratio allows for quick line pick-up during the retrieve in between my loud splashes and pauses.

The X-Rap Pop comes with two strong VMC trebles. In order to keep fish pinned with the most minimal of hooksets, I strongly encourage immediately swapping only the front hook in favor of Trokar Tk300 round bend treble hooks.

 

If you’ve located the fish, try these ten smallmouth bass methods for 2017. A diversified lure selection will not only make you a more versatile angler, but allow you to catch more fish. Prime patterns and favorite lures can be revisited each year, especially as the environment and behaviors of smallmouth bass dictate their locations and influence their feeding habits.

Chasing trophy smallmouth bass year round requires a good lure selection of fish catchers like this. Now tell me, what were your best of 2016?