by Bruce Middleton, August 22, 2005
I got a mess from a fan that prompted this story…
A man from Georgia moved up here to Washington State and began to fish for bass. He was lucky enough to find the washingtonlakes.com website and read all about all the local lakes that were around him and he and his boat hit the water. After fishing for months and reading every article, others and I had written he finally wrote to me and asked for advice. He was right on the verge of selling his boat and quitting the sport of bass fishing because he hadn’t caught a single bass after months and months and months of trying. He asked "what am I doing wrong?"
Well at first sight, you are looking at a guy who has been a successful bass angler for years down south and has pulled in his share of lunkers but fishing up here in the north country is a whole new ballgame. The single biggest difference between north and south is the prey fish the bass feed on. Down there they have shiners, shad and all sorts of small fish that just can’t tolerate the colder climates of the north. Here we have Crappie, Perch, Sunfish, and to some degree baby Bass as the main prey fish. Also down south the use of Salamanders and Crawfish lures are very prevalent whereas up here they just don’t seem to work hardly at all.
Big ½, ¾ and 1 ounce spinner baits are commonly thrown down south but up here a finesse 3/8s spinner bait will nap you strike after strike with crushing blows and big bass. The larger spinner baits can be thrown but in my humble opinion they scare off more bass than they draw strikes buy producing too much noise and flash. Also, painted blades seem to do much better than silver or gold although all of them work well. When I say painted blades, I’m speaking of blades that are the same colors and patterns as sunfish and perch, a bass’s natural prey.
Now, I got a reply to the answer I sent him saying he would try some of the lures I had suggested and down size some of the others and stop using the rainbow trout colors that he thought would be good up here. Apparently he has been watching T.V. and thinks that since big bass in California are caught on trout colors that the same must hold for the entire west coast. I set him straight on that one. Trout up here are loners preferring to hold out in the middle of the lake whereas bass are creatures of shallow cover.
As I mentioned earlier, I sent him a list of lures that I think are indispensable for fishing Washington lakes. So what I have done here is to set up what I think is a perfect tackle box with all the basic tools of the trade in it. Actually it’s not a long list but an important one as it is what I use the most of on a day-to-day basis, bass fishing.
A bass fisherman’s tackle box comes in many forms, shapes and sizes. Steel boxes, fabric boxes, and plastic boxes are the most common materials used to make them now although a steel tackle box is usually considered an antique. The shape and sizes of them however cover page after page after page of most popular fishing catalogs. Small ones that are just plastic boxes that will hold 8 or 10 lures up to suitcase sized ones that have extending handles and roller wheels just like luggage. And the sizes in between are staggering. But this article is more about what goes into those tackle boxes rather than the boxes themselves.
One should start out with a rather large and sturdy tackle box if you’re a bass fisherman. This is because of the shear number of lures, baits and plastics needed to properly stock a tackle box to meet most fishing situations. I personally have 5 tackle boxes just to hold my collection. Like most bass angles after a while we become collectors of lures as a by-product of buying so many new gadgets. By far the most room taken up in any tackle box will be by plastics. Worms, tubes, grubs, trailers, lizards, jars of Uncle Josh’s pork’s and creature baits with all the different styles, sizes and the rainbow of colors represents a staggering volume that has to stored. Even a beginner will have many, many bags of plastics and that number grows by leaps and bounds every year. Besides storage there is organization too.
Then there are crank baits, which are divided into 5 categories, lipless, top water lures, floating, neutral buoyant and sinking models. Each of these is then broken down into sub categories. For example the top water section is divided into chuggers, poppers, spitters, walkers and bugs. Other categories include the depth the lures dives to and if the lip is painted or not. If the lip is clear it doesn’t add to the length of the lure but if it’s painted it does add to the overall length. This is an important factor to remember.
Moving on the other major sections are jigs, spinner baits, buzz baits, hooks and miscellaneous terminal tackle and finally fishing line and leader line.
So now that you have a big tackle box and a pretty good idea of what you want to divide it into as far as organization goes, now its time to buy lures and baits and start to full the box up. But we’re not talking about going on Ebay and buying a bunch of inexpensive stuff here, we are talking about putting the best lures for the best reason so we can catch the biggest and best bass. So what is the first lure you put in the tackle box?
The number one lure of all time and still sells over a million a year is the Rapala Original Floating Minnow in silver color and in size f11. Other colors to consider are gold, perch and shiner all of which are proven colors. There are other good colors but these are the basics. Other sizes work too but the f11 with its three hooks just catches more bass than its two-hook counterpart.
Next are Shad Raps in the 2" model, and colors silver, perch, shad, red crawfish, blue shad, and silver shad. Glass Shad in the 2-3/4 inch models colors glass perch, glass black shad, glass blue shad, glass shad and glass purple shad will round out this set of crank baits. Bomber Fat A crank baits in colors honey shad, green ghost, midnight shad, red crystal crawfish, pearl black back and iridescent blue/yellow side will cover any water situation you will ever run into.
Rebel’s bumble bugs in every color they have are a must have for those hot summer days when nothing else seems to work. These deadly little lures really haul the bass in but you have to change the rear hooks to a number 4 size. This will not effect the action of the lure at all but the original hook are so small that it’s tough to keep a big bass on them without changing the hook size.
Cotton Cordell Super Spot lipless crank baits in colors tomatoes red, rayburn red, gray shad and blue shiner will burn up the grass beds for you searching for big bass hiding in the shade on sunny days.
The DT series of diving lures by Rapala is a must have. The DT stands for ‘dives to’. They make a dt-4, dt-6, dt-10 and a dt16 series. While every color, without exception is unbeatable the top four are silver, red crawfish, shad and blue gill.
A plastic frog or two is a must if you fish anywhere near thick weeds or lily pads. While people prefer dark green, bass like all colors. Legs are a must though, whether they are short or long doesn’t matter, just as long as there is some kind of leg attachment to the frog. Snag Proof makes some of the better frogs.
Tubes come in every size and shape and color imaginable. And yes I said shape. Not all tubes are created equally. Some tubes are as big around as a cigar and some are as big as a pencil and they are designed for different use. Thin ones are best for penetrating heavy cover and fat ones are best around standing timber. Bleeding tubes are good anytime. Color comes into play and is decided by water color. In clear water, use natural green hews and some browns, in dingy water use brighter colors and in muddy water use blacks and purples. Although black and blue can be used almost anytime.
Worms come in every size shape and color too. Ribbon tails, twin tails, ‘c’ tails, ‘u’ tails, straight tails, no tails, stick baits, spade tail, cut tail and so many more. The best advice anyone can honestly give you about worms is to go out and buy a wide variety of sizes, shapes and colors and experiment with them. Yes you should have some 4" senco black finesse worms and yes you should have some black and grape colored 6" curly tailed worms for general use. And yes a black worm with a blue tail is a great trailer for a jig, and so on and so on. You can make a case for every worm out there. As for the tackle box, the best thing I have found is what looks like a CD case called a binder case that has clear plastic pages in it so you can load different worms into each page, then zip it up when not in use. A very handy idea.
Colors and plastics are always a major topic of discussion anywhere you get more than two bass anglers together. For starters there are now something like 250 different colors of worms available on the market today. That is a lot of choices. Solid colors, laminates and solid colors except for the tails. So how do you even start to make an informed choice when you first start to buy them? The sky, and water color will tell you a lot, the other and probably most important factor is the bass themselves. Bass spend a lot of time foraging for food on the bottom of the lake they live in. Most of that food has spent millions of years of evolution trying to camouflage itself. As a diver, I can tell you the bottom of most lakes are green, brown, gray and black. These primary colors are broken down into many, many different hues but these are the basic colors. If you throw worms and other plastic that try to hide, the bass will find and eat them. If you throw colors that don’t look real the bass may bite them. The one thing that is a for sure is the presentation. If it looks alive and acts alive, you stand a much better chance of getting a strike than if it looks and acts fake.
The best spinner bait is a 3/8’s ounce nickel Colorado blade with a black/white (called a muddler) skirt that has just a splash of red in it. The second spinner you put in the box is the same except the skirt is white with just a touch of red in it. If it is an 80-strand skirt, 2 or 3 strands should be red and no more. The third spinner is a gold willow leaf blade with a black skirt, the forth is a gold willow leaf blade with a white skirt. The fifth and sixth spinners are a tandem silver Indiana blade with a small gold Colorado blade with a black and white skirts. And the seventh and eighth spinner baits are large painted Indiana blades to look like blue gill with a large red eye, the blade should be about 1-3/4 inches long or more and a second blade should be a small gold Colorado blade and the shirt should be 80 strand multi colored to match the colors of a blue gill. So the colors are light green, yellow, silver, white, black and dark green.
Buzz baits are easier, as you only need four of them 2 with silver blades, one with a black blade and one with a white blade. All blades are a three bladed type that have very high resistance so you can retrieve them very slowly but they run quite easily on the top of the water. All buzz baits have a clacker. One silver and one black buzz bait have a black skirt and one silver and one white buzz bait have a white skirt.
Hooks, sinkers, swivels and jig heads are next. Start with EWG (extra wide gap) hooks in sizes 0/2, 0/3 and 0/4, add in a few 90 degree off-set hooks in 0/3 size and top it off with some "R" bend hooks in red, size 0/2. If you are planning to do any drop shot fishing a pack of circle octopus hooks size 1 or 2 in red is ideal. Sinkers include split shot in a variety pack, egg sinkers in a variety pack, bullet sinkers in a variety pack and a few drop weights in weights from 1/8th ounce up to ½ ounce. Three way swivels are always useful but snap swivels are never recommended when bass fishing. Tie directly to the line as using a snap swivel impairs the action of many lures. Jig heads in various length and hook sizes are used but one is always the first to buy. Always buy a pack of Buckeye lures Spot Removers. These jig heads have a spike on the lead head to impale the plastic on, the eye is offset by 90 degrees and the front of the lead head is flat. It is built so that when you hook up, say a worm, that the worm is hooked weedless and it always falls flat side down with the tail of the worm standing up. On spawning bass a worm in or near their bed standing up worries a bass to the point that they will swim over to it and just plain kill it. It also shows up from greater distances and when feeding bass strike it they don’t take in a lot of bottom debris. You can use sinking or floating worms or other plastics with this jig head but in the spring a small black 4-inch finesse worm on bedding bass is best.
Jigs should be black, brown, blue or grape and most of the time I use a shortened worm with a "C" tail as a trailer and not a pork chunk. Never use the same color worm as the color of the jig. Example, one of my favorite combinations is a black jig with a blue worm that is cut down to about 4 or so inches or a blue jig with a grape worm. Remember too that you can use these trailers on spinner baits and buzz baits also with great success.
Miscellaneous items such as different kinds of fishing lines, nail clippers turned line cutters, files or stones turned into hook sharpeners, scales, battery tester and a few other odds and ends round out the tackle box. The only problem now is seeing if the lid will shut or the pockets will zip shut or do we go out and buy a bigger tackle box or just another one.
Fluorocarbon fishing line is a must have even if you use it as leader only. Its invisibility to bass makes it so. A good variety of poundage’s for light spinning finesse fishing up to heavy jigging line is a must. Buy line depending on how many reels you own. Also change the line every year at a minimum.
And lastly, never ever throw anything into the water that doesn’t have some sort of scent added to it. I can’t emphasize this point enough, and keep your hands clean of anything that put a foreign smell on your lures or baits.
Yes I missed a few of your favorite lures but these are the basics after all. You have enough cranks to cover every situation and enough of everything else to fill in the gaps. From here you can establish a fair start to a great collection if you buy a few more tackle boxes.
A Rapala f-11 silver original floating minnow, a black jig and a blue "C" tailed worm and a 3/8 ounce spinner bait with painted blades the color of sunfish or perch set up on three rods with the rest of the basic list in the tackle box. Now that is a formula for success on any lake in Washington State lake. Two search baits that can be used to either cover a lot of water in a short time or pick apart any structure with ease. And a slow and methodical back up if you get short struck or you can use the jig to go where no other lure dares to tread. 90% of the time when I hit the lake for a day of bass fishing, this is what I have tied on the end of the three rods I have in the boat with me. Why? Because I like to see the line go tight.
