by Bruce Middleton, December 02, 2008

To define the term “presentation” when applied to bass fishing, presentation is the use of movement, sight, sound and smell given to a lure or bait to attract a bass and have it strike that lure or bait. Movement is the way we add a distinct set of motions to a lure or bait so a bass can readily identify it as a living object verses a non-food item. Sight consists of the lure or bait you use, the size of it, the colors of it and whether or not it strobes or flashes as it moves in the water. Sound it the property we add to invoke the bass’s hearing in order for them to locate the object from various distances and to add a realistic life like feature to the bait or lure. Smell is an attractant that we use to simulate food and to stimulate the strike response. Since a bass uses all its senses to survive and sustain itself in its liquid environment, we try our best to duplicate food items using a presentation that utilizes all these features of the senses so as to fool the bass into striking a given lure or bait.

When you are out bass fishing, no matter what lure or bait you are using, the presentation of that bait or lure is what triggers a strike reflex from any bass. It doesn’t matter if you are fishing on the surface of the water, on the bottom of the body of water or some where down the water column. How you present that bait or lure makes all the difference in the world. You can have the perfect lure in the perfect place at the perfect time but if you present it wrong to the bass they will ignore that bait or lure. Now you can have a not so perfect bait or lure in the water at any time but if it is presented correctly it will catch bass. This shows that presentation is actually the most important part of fishing for bass.

A questionnaire posed by the NAFC (North American Fishing Club) asked its members what was the most important change one could make to a presentation to improve its appeal to bass. It wasn’t down sizing or up sizing. It wasn’t a color change and it wasn’t a lure or bait change. Not surprisingly, a change in retrieve speed was the number one answer. This is because it is the simplest, fastest and easiest thing to change and because a change in speed gives the lure a different look and vibration pattern. By simply using 3 casts slower that your normal presentation speed and then 3 cast using a faster than normal speed and finally by adding, lengthening or changing the cadence of pauses or starts and stops can be done without retying a different lure or bait on the line. It also changes the appearance of the lure, the amount of flash or color strobe it gives off and the sound of that lure changes. That is why it is the correct answer.

Now don’t dismiss the other answers as being useless information as it is very important to know. This is because if a change in retrieve speed does not trigger strikes from bass then they are what you change in order to find that perfect lure or bait to use at that time, in that place and at that depth.

Now speaking of depth, this is the most important key when fishing for bass at any time and any place. This is because you need to fish where the bass are. Flogging the water in the wrong place is just an exercise in futility and not a whole lot of fun in the end. But once you have discovered what is the right depth then how the bait or lure looks to the bass becomes preeminent.

Now we all have a lot of lures to choose from when it comes to deciding what to use and where. From the surface to the bottom is a lot of territory to cover. This factor is usually governed by the time of year, the time of day and the water and sky conditions. With time on the water comes intuition as to which lure to use when and where. Even beginning bass anglers if they remember what they used when and where can build up view of what works when and where. But unfortunately all to many bass fishermen just dump their boats into the water and circle a lake or a portion of it at a set distance from the shore no matter how the depth varies. This is so wrong! For one, bass don’t live under docks all year round. Their seasonal movements varies the depth the bass hold in and if you don’t know and don’t follow this single fact, you will never be really good at bass fishing. Again you have to fish where the bass are and this means that you will be doing a lot of fishing out in 8 to 15 feet of water and not in 2 to 6 feet of water.

Amateur anglers can also set up for themselves a logbook to help them compile the knowledge they have gained. By tracking each catch and noting the time of day, the time or seasonal movements of the bass, the lure used, the color of the lure, water and sky, the type of water and other conditions a beginning bass angler can soon establish patterns he has come across and how he fished and what he used to catch fish. This is an easy and accurate way to increase you knowledge of bass fishing using time on the water to give you some intuition about what had worked for you when and where and what you should use when and where. By adding every possible contingency the bass was caught under like was it in the shade or sun, what weeds were around, what type of cover was the bass in and everything else you can remember will give you a huge understanding of where to fish, what lure to use and what cover to look for. A simple idea that really works.

So lets look at a couple of scenarios of how to correctly go about presenting the perfect bait or lure to bass at the right time and the right place. Lets say it is early spring and the bass are in pre-spawn. This means the bass are going to begin to stage themselves in ever-shallower water until the spawn happens. Places to fish are points, the drop off of flats where the weed line starts and the front edges of the weed lines. No not docks as the bass are still too deep to be in water that shallow.

When the spawn occurs, the place to fish is in very shallow water that ranges from one foot deep out to about 8 to 10 feet deep. This is an exciting time of year because you can see the bass in this shallow water. They can also be spotted by looking for the color change of the bottom, which indicates where the bass beds are.

After the spawn the bass will back track their movements back out into deeper water and are most often found back on points, in the weedy flat edges, the fronts of weed beds with a few bass setting under a dock or two. As the water continues to warm the bass move to where they have established their summer homes. This is the time of year that varies the most as to where bass can be found. Bass at this time of year usually hunt in water that has good cover, protection from the sun and offers shade to mask their profiles. Bass are caught on the surface a lot at this time of year and they are attracted to places that have rapid changes in elevation. Weed and grass beds are full of bass and places like lily pads and cow lilies fields are great places to look for bass.

In the fall when the water starts to cool the bass are found outside the dying weed line until the sun has been up for a while. This is because the decaying of all the vegetation eats up lot of oxygen and it’s hard for a bass to live in an area that doesn’t have enough to support them. So they school up out in deep water suspended at the level they are going to feed at. These schools of bass are exciting to come across because they offer so many bass at a fairly predictable depth. This is when the most bass are caught during the year. Contributing to this is the fact that when the bass do move into the flats and grass and weed beds to feed, they are hungry and are instinctively feeding in order to put on as much weight as they can before winter comes. Look for these schools of bass just outside of spawning bays and the front edges of weed beds at 6 to 12 feet of water. Now the bass may be right in front of these places but normally they are some distance away from all that decay so look about 10 to 20 yards out from these areas.

Now that you understand where the bass are, the next thing to consider is the water and sky conditions you are fishing under at that time of year. Clear water is where bass do a lot of sight feeding and are attracted to flashes from long distances. In muddy water the bass are more hearing feeding where loud lures and baits are used and bright colors are called for. Strobeing colors are used in this type of environment. Bass are usually deeper in clear water and quite shallow in muddy water. They will be in between in dingy water.

The sky conditions will determine how the bass position themselves in the areas they are found at that time of year. That is to say if the sky is sunny, the bass have a habit of moving to areas that offer shade to both protect their eyes and to camouflage their profiles. On cloudy days the bass are usually more active in their efforts to roam around looking for food.

Now along with the sky and water conditions come the factor of wind. Wind puts ripples on the surface of the water adding to the secure feeling bass get when they know they won’t be attacked from the sky. On mirror smooth lakes the bass habitually stay near the bottom keeping as much water as possible between themselves and the surface of the water.

All this is easy to understand but far too few bass anglers don’t seem to consider these factors. Bass fishing is a thinking mans game and it takes a lot of effort to consider all the variables and decide where to fish, at what depth and what lures or baits will likely work the best for taking them. This is one reason there are not more professional bass anglers. You have to be very smart in order to make a living at this game.

Now as to which lures and baits you need to use to catch bass and which ones offer the best chance of causing a reflex strike comes into play. Obviously, top water lures are great for taking bass in low light levels like dawn and dusk and deeply shaded areas of a body of water. But they are a great choice when it comes to fishing in extremely weedy areas where any diving lure that plows through this vegetation will simply get fouled up in the weeds and grass.

Fishing the water column not counting the surface and bottom comes into play when you are fishing along weed lines, points and other places that offer large changes in elevation is a small area or offer very little vegetation to interfere with your lure presentation. It is also the way to fish for suspending bass in the fall. Crank baits, Carolina rigged plastics, spinner baits and the like are most often used when fishing these objects.

Fishing the bottom of the body of water usually happens in fairly shallow water. This is not to say that it doesn’t work in deep water as it does but the surface make-up of the bottom must be understood in order to do it right. Fishing deep water with a bottom lure where the bottom is soft and muddy doesn’t work well as the bait falls into the mud and is hard to see and strike. Now where the bottom is hard, no matter at what depth, is the place to fish bottom baits. This is why shallow water is most often identified with bottom baits, as this is where the bottom is usually nice and firm.

Next, comes the amount of vegetation you are fishing in as this too affects the type of lures and baits you can use. Places that are open with not a lot of vegetation are perfect to fish the widest range of baits and lures. Fishing in heavy weeds limits what lures you can use to the extreme.

The last consideration to understand is cover. Bass are creatures of shallow cover. They like rocky areas, log piles, underwater brush piles and stumps and fallen trees to hide in and around. A bass will instinctively move to these places because they offer concealment, ambush points, shade and a varied change in depth all adding up to an ideal place to inhabit. They also like weedy areas as this offers the most protection and the best hunting grounds.

Now that all these questions have been addressed it is time to choose which lure you are going to use. Crank baits, spinner baits, buzz baits, swim baits, jigs, Texas rigged plastics, Carolina rigged plastics, wacky rigged, weightless rigged plastics and others are all used to take bass.

Crank baits come in floating, sinking and neutral buoyant types. Square billed crank baits are ideal for fishing around brush and fallen trees, as they will flip over these obstacles without getting hung up. Crank baits with a wide wobble also are used around this type of cover because they crash into them but seldom get hung up. Floating crank baits are also used as they can be backed out of places where they may have hung up. Just remember not to pull to hard on the lure, instead let the line go limp and let the floating characteristics take over.

Spinner baits come in different sizes, weights, colors of the blades and skirts. They are great out in open water and can handle quite a bit of vegetation without getting tangled. Jigs are used generally in more open water without a lot of vegetation. Under and docks, brush piles, log jams and the like where we use them the most. Plastics cover the area from the surface to the bottom and all points in-between. It only matters how it is rigged as this determines how and where they are fished.

So which do you use and when? Again you have to consider all the variables to decide which lure or bait makes the most sense to use. You also have to consider what the bass are feeding on at the time and what is available to them in that body of water. In almost all cases we try to duplicate what the bass are feeding on and present it to them like it was a living thing. This is what presentation is all about. No matter what lure or bait you use it must be presented to the bass in such a way as to make it look as realistic as possible. Then and only then will the bass find it attractive and be willing to strike it.

In order to make any bait or lure especially attractive we employ a variety of motions to duplicate what is found naturally in the water the bass live in. This can vary the speed of the retrieve, whether we add starts and stops, how long these pauses may be and what specific type of movement the bait or lure has to have in order to make it appear real. We also add sound sounds as an attractant. Whether that is a rattle in a crank bait or on a jig, a clacker on a buzz bait, a jointed crank bait or noisily spinning blades, sound is important to understand and use when needed and appropriate. And finally we add scent to make the bait or lure smell good and to mask any bad smells.

Many anglers believe that movement is a key factor in taking bass. This is because like us a bass may not see an object until it moves. This instantly draws our attention to it and bass are believed to act the same.

The movements we impart to the lures we use is determined by what we are trying to duplicate food wise. In the case of a jig we are trying to imitate the actions of a crawfish, one of a bass’s favorite foods. Crawfish make a clicking noise with their exoskeletons as they move. They also creep along the bottom at a very slow speed unless they are frightened when they jump six inches to up to a foot at one time in an effort to escape a predator. We move our jigs in this manner to duplicate these motions imparting a life-like look and realistic sound. We also add scent, as this is an important attractant. A bass is more likely to strike a lure or bait if it smell right and smells good.

Minnow lure crank baits imitate small baitfish. Baitfish usually suspend in the water not moving a lot unless they are afraid in which case they sprint to the surface or to cover in order to out run predators. So we must imitate these movements with these lures so they too look like a real minnow and therefore a target for a hungry bass. We also duplicate an injured or unwary minnows movements to make the lure look even more appetizing.

Soft plastics like a worm are imitations of forage food most often found on either the surface or the bottom of a body of water. Food items like frogs, worms, crawfish, small snakes, grubs, minnows and the like are on a bass’s diet and we use plastic imitation in order to fool the bass into thinking that these artificial baits are in fact real. This is also why plastics come in so many forms and colors. We want them to blend in with the lake bottom but not so much so that they are invisible. Also different colors resemble the molting patterns of crawfish as well as all the varieties of forage on the lake bottom.

Spinner baits are an attractor with a food item below it. That is to say, that the spinning blades of a spinner bait are used to attract bass to them but it is the skirt with or without a trailer that the bass actually strikes at because it looks like a food item to them. We use shiny blades in clear water and we use colored blades in dingy to muddy water because this is what attracts the most bass to them. Buzz baits are also akin to this type of presentation as it has a flashing or strobing set of blades and a food item representation below it.

One last thought about presentation, and that is how the lure inters the water. A small as possible splash is always a must have. You can present a bait or lure perfectly but if your cast has caused a huge splash it may scare all the immediate bass out of the area or make them very spooky. Casting is just as important a feature of presentation as all the other features are. Casting is the way we get out lures to the place we want to start fishing so don’t screw up a perfect presentation with a bad cast. If you do make a bad cast, wait a minute or two before recasting as this gives the bass time to settle down.

Now we have the full picture of what lures to use and when, we know the movements of the bass and we know his habitat. Knowing what they eat helps us choose the right lure and colors needed for any given situation. We add motion as an attractor and we try to duplicate live food item movements so as to appear natural. All this adds up your presentation. Presentation is everything when it comes to out smarting a wily bass. So stop and think about it for a second or two about what lures to choose and when and where. You will find you actually know a lot more about bass and bass fishing than you yourself may have thought. Good luck and enjoy!


Bruce Middleton
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