Best Bait For Bass

Hello Dwight Norris of fishingatwork.com and today we're going to talk about the best bait for bass. Now you probably have some typical bass bait you like to fish with at your current location. you believe they are the best bait for bass in your area.

Well the general consensus is really around two different things. so there really isn't a best actually. I'll talk the best because it's my preference, but you may have another preference. 

now these two things, which are the best bait for bass are one your go to baits. The plastic worm that has been around forever. It works forever. It works when it's alive. it works when it’s not alive.

The fish have adequate amounts of worms. They are always available. They know exactly what it is. they know to bite it in freshwater and saltwater. 

Local Baitfish

Now the other thing is just as prominent and that is a minnow type lure. There's various types that you can get. They all work very well and try to mimic the local baitfish in your area.

Now there are all different types of minnow in certain areas. Your lake may have a different format than a lake that's a couple miles away. Depending on how it was stopped. Your river may have different types of foods that come in at different times during the year. You might want to mix up your minnow baits to mimic those. 

So a little bit of research can go a long way. If you time you're fishing correctly. I personally don't have very many right now. I'm still learning about this local area here at Charles River and a variety of herring come through are the blueback herring, but there's also the greenback herring. There's some kind of shad that comes in as well. I think there's like five or six baitfish and they all come in from the sea. Striped bass and bluefish will sometimes follow them all the way up the river because it's an easy meal.

Local Forage

There's also crayfish, I'd go down primarily down a side over here called the Mystic River, which kind of splits off as soon as that goes through the gate from the Atlantic Ocean, right here at the Boston Harbor. The crayfish go away and minnows go both ways because they are everywhere.

I haven't gone the section where crayfish like hatch around here. They're around where I used to live in southern Virginia. I could just walk in and pick them up. Obviously the fish like to do the same thing. They also have to fight those when they have a spawning. The crayfish will try to eat the bass eggs and they are very ferocious. The male is very ferocious when it's protected. 

Best Bait For Bass Fishing

So why are these two different types of lures the best bait for bass? Primarily for the worm there's a reason it's lasted forever. The fish know what a worm is. They know it's very nutritious. It's abundant. It's easy to eat. It's not going to run away super fast. It's going to bounce on the bottom.

It's good from the time that they're young when they're young and impressionable just like I was. You can use Magnum worms and imitate a gigantic worm and possibly get a huge largemouth bass by culling the small ones.

A lot of us that were up to like 10 inch worms. If you study bass long enough, you'll realize that right after the female gives birth she gets the inactive for about about two weeks. She comes back and she's hungry. She may or may not become cannibalistic. It could be worse. It could be a minnow. It could be her own young.

That's the reason why largemouth bass and really small fish are a mainstay for fishermen. They eat everything and they need to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. That means it's easier for you to catch. Bass have been found with several muskies in their mouth as long as a foot.

Plastic Worms For Bass Fishing

Take for example a monster bass. This size bass will eat anything that's 30% of its size. I found a largemouth bass with what looked like a bream that was half its size. I'm talking like a three pound bass with over a pound bream or bluegill in its mouth. Why are you eating eight inch worm when you have a huge panfish in your mouth? When your hungry your hungry I guess.

So that's one of the reasons why a plastic worm is so good. There may different types. There's this Zoom Trick Worm, which I have mostly used unweighted. We can float down and kind of mimic a falling and worm that has the scent of the Berkeley Power Worms.

That's another way to entice them if they're skeptical about their the rubber worm. Various colors are important too. I have another video up here about the best color plastic worms for bass.

I talk about the plastic worm colors brown, green, and black. Why? Those are generally the colors you're gonna see in the wild. Except during the time of day I talked about in my last video. The best time to fish for bass is at nighttime. I can't make videos in the dark without a headlamp and stuff. Maybe in the future. 

Why is a minnow lure really good? We always say to match the hatch when you're trying to fish because the fish are going to eat what they eat every day. If you can trick them into thinking that your lure is what they eat every day, then it will be easier to get the bite. If you try to throw a purple and yellow mega crawdad at a bass you may get some reaction bites because it is smaller than them.

Most of the time, they're looking for something they don't normally eat. So like I said earlier, you want to know what the forage is in your in your area. It may be minnows, shad, herring or something else. Then find a reputable company like Rapala that has a nice matching of the hatch and the size as well. The size may actually be your preference. You can get small ones. Everything starts small.

You can have really large bass and they are hungry and they go for the biggest slowest thing they can find because they don't want to waste energy. You might go for a six inch or maybe even larger. I'm not even sure they make them larger. Maybe the one with the three treble hooks floating or sinking or suspended one.

Find out where their are drop offs. A concentration of bass will be in these particular conditions. Put it in front of them and try it out. You may find out that they will eat things much larger than you imagined. That will increase your chances of catching bigger bass.

Another reason this is the best bait for for bass is because honestly, if they're surrounded by fish, and they get a little jealous when there's a lot of bass around. They see something that they know is delicious. They might not even expect it.

When you're using a minnow baitfish lure like this, it's usually going a little faster than a worm. You don't get much time to really think about it. They'll use their senses that they can use that particular point in time. They can hear if it has rattles. They can see the flash that it's yellow and the bottom is black.

Look at the bottom of a minnow. It's silver on the bottom. Therefore it looks like the light so it makes them kind of invisible. When it moves, it flashes and they say hey, that's something smaller than me up there. That's probably a minnow and it's probably delicious. So not going to sniff it. I'm not going to taste it. We're just gonna go engulf it. That's the fish for you buddy! So these are just some of the great reasons why worms and minnows  type lures are the best the best bait for bass.

To get the 10 step process to go Fishing At Work now if you have a problem with fishing more in your life and you don't know how to overcome it. I have a process written out in a very short PDF with excellent information about how you can go from not fishing that much to fishing a lot and being out here like I am now.

You can be fishing on a work day in the middle of the day when everybody else is at the office thinking about work or actually working or sitting there eating their food and working because when you're at your desk technical working in your brain. You can't get out of yourself if you don't leave the office.

That's why people who work from home actually go  work at those little remote sessions because they get so out of it. They realize I like that social connection, but if you don't that's fine! I also have created another document that shows you How To Catch More Bass. Remember you can fish whenever you want and the best bait for bass are worms and minnow type lures.