MY FAVORITE SWIMBAIT PRESENTATION FOR BASS

Learn how a belly-weighted swimbait can be your new best bass fishing weapon

I grew up a river rat learning to bass fish on the Arkansas River. As an angler, it mostly meant spinnerbaits, black and blue jigs with pork chunks, a big worm and some shallow cranking. Outside of that, you didn’t need much else.

As I’ve gotten older the shallow crankbait has played less and less in my fishing as the conditions seem to line up less and less for me. And the spinnerbait seems to require good water color to be a factor much either.

THE BACKGROUND EVOLUTION ON WEEDLESS SWIMBAITS

While many gravitated to vibrating jigs like Chatterbaits and Jack Hammers as our waters got clearer, I was gravitating more to swimbaits. I have been a heavy-jighead swimbait guy since 2009 for offshore bass and was one the guys that showed a lot of the other TN River guys about it in the early days.

While a lot of guys like using a belly weighted swimbait, I was completely against them offshore because you got way better hookups with a jighead and you could use the jighead version to find hard spots and shell beds. Those swimbaits helped me dial in the small trash can lid sized sweet spot on many a ledge in quick order back in the day.

As the fishing declined on Kentucky Lake starting around 2018, it became tougher to find big groups of fish offshore and it became more about finding isolated forms of cover like stumps, brush piles and deep rock. And as that became more the norm, I gravitated back to the 3/4 ounce spinnerbait to come through cover better.

But even then, you still lost a good many spinnerbaits on stumps, gnarly pieces of brush and more. So I started experimenting with belly weighted swimbaits on weedless hooks. I had mixed results early on with the spinnerbait catching more early on. But as our waters cleared more and more and the fishing got tougher, the belly rigged swimbait began outproducing everything else for me.

BRINGING IT TO THE PRESPAWN

A couple years ago, I started replacing my spinnerbait fishing with swimbaits. I would take a 5-inch swimbait with a Flashy Swimmer hook and pull it through cover, fish it shallow through grass, skip it under docks and pull it down laydowns.

I began to realize I had more versatility with this setup and really started perfecting swimbait combos, weights, and line to get the right setup. I had been introduced to the DUO Realis Versa Shad Fat in the 5-inch size and that paired with an 8/0 3/8-ounce Owner Flashy Swimmer gave me the perfect combination for brush pile fish as well as, I would later find out, prespawn fish.

Now it has become my go-to after having some of my best prespawn fishing in the last two years with it. Last year I had a 26-pound bag with it on my best day with a 7-pound kicker.

This year, I landed my personal best bass of 10 pounds, 4 ounces on it this past weekend on a smaller city lake. But because of it’s versatility I have been fishing it in clean and muddy water alike. I’ve been fishing it deep and shallow alike. Around cover and out in the open alike. So far, I really haven’t found a condition it’s not right for.

GETTING IT RIGHT

I have had some frustration through the process of learning to be effective with this setup. Namely because you will get hits and the fish not get the bait. You have to learn to adjust your reactions, fight differently and keep contact through cover to get really good with it. But when you do, then it’s a very effective tool for catching those big prespawn bass staging around cover.

There are some things I can share to help shorten your learning curve. First, would be that these bites are more like swimbait bites than spinnerbait baits. A lot of times on a spinnerbait bite, the bass comes up from behind, closes it’s mouth around the bait and you lose contact with the bait before feeling the fish.

As you get good with a spinnerbait you learn to feel the sensation we call “taking the water off the blade.” You actually feel your blades quit spinning as the mouth is closing around it and sort of wind yourself up for a good hookset.

With a swimbait bite, the bite is often savage and faster. So you will feel a hard knock or jump in your line followed by the bass swimming at full speed for several feet. Great when the fish is going away from you. A nightmare when coming towards you.

Normally in the prespawn, I like slower gear ratio reels in that 5.3:1 to 6.5:1. But with these swimbaits, I’ve found 6.5 to 8:1 reels are better. You have to make yourself reel slower, but when a big bass bites and swims 20 feet at you, you have a chance to at least catch up and set the hook on them.

After you’ve caught a lot of bass on a swimbait, you learn to detect the bite and then wind hard until the rod starts to load to then really drive the hook. Then keep cranking hard on them to make sure the hook drives and maintain that tension, as a hard charging big bass comes unbuttoned most times in that lack of tension while charging at you.

I also have opted up in line size. I use 17 to 20-pound fluorocarbon. Even though my swimbait and hook combo isn’t even 3/4 ounce, the heavy line aids in controlling your bait in cover, setting a good hook at distance, and controlling a big fish fight up close to the boat. I got some good video this weekend of a bass that ran me around an iron stake and I was able to land it even though it frayed and peeled my line. Something I would likely have not been able to do with lighter line, or even braid. Braid and metal and hard pulling bass generally equals an easily broken line.

WHY THIS SWIMBAIT & HOOK COMBO

There are no doubt some great swimbaits to choose from besides the Duo Versa Shad Fat and Owner is not the only brand that makes belly weighted weedless hooks. But I like the combo of these two because the Versa Shad is made of a bit denser material that really locks on the big spring lock of the Beast Hook and the Flashy Swimmer Hook in the larger sizes. And I have caught dozens of big bass on a single bait before it tears up. So a 5 pack can last you days of heavy fish catches.

More importantly, the Versa Shad tail kicks like I want a swimbait to kick on this rig. It’s not subtle, but it’s not moving the hook all over the place either. I want to feel the subtle tail wag as I retrieve. It also creates a “drag” I can get accustomed to so that I can easily detect the slightest variance in pressure to know something has come up behind the bait and is eating it. And I can feel as my line is “climbing over” a limb or stump.

These subtle queues are what really make this combination the right one for me. I am very in tune with how they feel together and more importantly, when they change.

Now I won’t say you don’t miss any fish on this setup. I have felt a lot of “blade pullers” with this setup. I think they must be panfish or small bass that come up and smack or nip at the blade. You feel a slight stutter or peck and then nothing ever loads. You will feel it stutter the bait. I’ve also seen shad follow it back on a shad spawn and you can feel them tripping the blade up when they do that. So I feel like that must be what happens when a bluegill or something comes up and grabs the blade.

I also have some fish that freight train it and you set and completely whiff. Only to find that the plastic is balled up on the hook. Most of the time this happens when you get excited and don’t check your bait and ensure that your hook is riding flush on the back or in the hook groove pocket on the back. If you make sure everything is inline on every cast, you will snag less and hook more fish. When that hook is sticking way out of the back, you get hung on branches and grass more.

Normally though. I hook a high percentage of fish by reeling steady (with an occasional stop stutter), and then when I feel the “tick” or see my line jump, I speed up my reeling until the rod just barely starts to load and then drive a hookset hard. Then you have to wind as hard as possible for about 10 turns to gain control of the direction, the fish and the fight.

RECENT EXPERIENCES WITH THE BELLY WEIGHTED SWIMBAIT BITE

I really love the prespawn bite with swimbaits. I’ve long been a Megabass Magdraft guy. Back before it was cool even. And I’ve caught them on glide baits here and there over the years when the conditions were right in the prespawn. But more often then not, we are dealing with dirty water, fluctuations in water, lots of extra debris in the water, and the need to fish tighter to deeper cover. All of these things point more towards a weedless rigged swimbait.

I actually discovered how powerful this approach was last spring. I had been having good success with the belly weighted swimbait on brush piles in the summer for a few years. And decided to try it for deep laydowns in the prespawn which can be a really good pattern on Kentucky and Barkley Lakes when the water is not muddy.

I was on a trip and fishing a small lake near where we were staying. The water was dirty from recent rains and up. So a lot of the cover was completely covered and not easy to see although you knew it was there. I decided to go with the belly weighted Versa Shad and Flashy Swimmer Combo.

The very first laydown I came to I fired the rig up there and my first fish was a 7.1-pound largemouth. I was jacked to say the least! I went on that day to catch 26 pounds and lost 4 other big fish on the rig. I was using 15 pound line and getting my butt kicked in the cover at times. A hard lesson, but one I learned.

This year, I found similar conditions. High muddy water, that was clearing and getting more stabilized after floods a few weeks back. My first morning out, I had 7 bass from 4 to 6 pounds before the lightning and wind got up and gusting to 40 mph. So I got off the lake early.

Came back out the next morning with my brother in law. We fished a while and he caught 3 fish to my zero pretty quick with a spinnerbait, but none over 2 pounds. I finally managed one about 3 pounds on the swimbait combo.

We fished a new area that I hadn’t fished the previous day and I missed a couple small fish and we caught a few small fish. Then we switched areas again and he picked up his swimbait combo I had rigged up for him. We didn’t go 20 yards and he set the hook. He was fighting what looked to be a good bass when I saw the head come up about 40 feet out.

I thought to myself, “Oh my Lord! That’s a 10-pounder!” I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to be nervous. I just coached him to stay tight on the fish, and I would grab it when he got it close to us. I grabbed the fish by the jaw with two hands. It was like grabbing a piece of luggage. I had never felt a jaw bone so big in my hands. We were high-fiving, hooting and dancing at this point.

I said, “Man! You just caught another 10-pounder.” John and I had bank fished a golf course pond years ago where he hooked and I landed for him a fish that was closer to 11 pounds than to 10 pounds. John isn’t an avid angler, but he’s a good luck charm to have around when big fish are present. He’s got a knack to stick with it and get a big one.

We got all the measurements, took a bunch of quick photos and then kept the fish in the water until we were sure it was good to swim off. More high fives and then settled down to start fishing again. I spun the boat back around to go down the stretch further.

I fired my swimbait out and reeled it slow for about 10 feet when a big wake came in and slugged it. I set the hook and said, “Dude! This is another giant!” Sure enough a giant head came out of the water, and I’m just thinking “grind it to the boat and keep tight on it.”

John snagged it up and put it in the boat. The heaviest fish next to John’s beast from years ago I had I ever held. And certainly my biggest eclipsing my previous best 9-pound, 12-ounce bass.

“There’s no way that just happened,” I said. “Surely this isn’t the same fish?”

It wasn’t. I checked all around the fish and the only hole in it’s lip was from my swimbait.

More pictures and time spent making sure the fish was strong to swim off. Shot a quick release video of it and sent it on it’s way. I was mesmerized by how big their jaws were. And how hard it was to hold one up for a photo. There is something special about tricking an old big bass. I sure hope those fish make some great memories for other folks. I was glad I got to share that experience with my brother.

We could not believe how those two giants were cruising the same prespawn area. I’ve long believed big bass move to more nocturnal habits, especially on smaller bodies of water, the bigger and older they get. This day was spitting rain, dark skies and a delayed sunrise by 30 minutes. A terrible day to film so I didn’t have my cameras on me. But a perfect day to find big prespawn females slipping up and lurking shallow after daylight.

After the days I had last spring and summer on this setup, I knew it was becoming something special in my weapons cache. But now it’s getting favor as my “first choice” of weapons when going bass fishing anywhere. Big reservoirs, clear highland impoundments, muddy, small city lakes, and more have produced big fish for me with this swimbait setup.

I’ll have a two part video series on my YouTube channel soon showing a couple of good trips with this setup and a lot of my personal thoughts on fishing it as I go. Unfortunately the two 10 pounders weren’t on film except for the release of the biggest one. But will share a bunch of 4 to 7-pound catches with you.

Let me know if you try it and have good success with it. Or share your favorite combo for swimbaits. I’d love to hear what you prefer to fish with these types of setups.

Good Fishing to you!

Jason