Our Top Baits for Largemouth Bass

Like you, when we go out fishing, we want to catch fish. We will use baits that will produce fish in the conditions we are facing, whether we made them or not. Below is our list of baits, which in our experience, produce the most consistent catches of good-sized Largemouth Bass.

Slick Willy®- Overall, the best bait we have ever used for Largemouth Bass. Some fishermen think that this 5.5 inch long bait is far too big for Largemouth. I can assure you that the fish wholeheartedly disagree. When they roll it up in their mouths, it's all gone. We have caught Largemouth as small as 6 inches in size to over 10.5lbs, with these baits!

Let the reactions of the fish dictate how they want the lure presented. A good place to start is with a medium action on a relatively slack line. Fished unweighted, the bait will 'Walk the Dog" in a wide, lazy manner, on the surface presenting an easy target for the Bass. If the fish are aggressive, you should speed up your action in order to put the bait in front of more fish.

If a bass smacks the bait and misses it altogether, just leave the bait where it is and it will suspend and then start to sink ever so slowly. Usually, the fish that hit the bait, will be sitting a few feet away watching it, intently. If you do not move it, he will think he stunned it and will come back and eat the bait. If he hasn't eaten it after a minute or so (it will seem like an eternity!), you might need to give the bait a couple of tiny twitches, to show the Bass it's still alive and could escape, then WHAMMMM!

Believe me, it's worth the wait! We usually catch 70% or more of the fish which miss the bait the first time, using this exact method. These baits are the best 'actors' we have ever seen at playing sick, weak, injured and dying. They should get an Oscar!

If the action is slow, the Bass have probably tucked in tighter to cover or are not very aggressive. You will need to slow down the action of the bait to match the mood of the fish. Make them an offer they can't refuse! You will find that by making the bait look like an easier target, the Bass will usually start to bite again.

Move the hook point slightly further back than normal, so that the front dips a little,and the Slick Willy® will dive like a crankbait and 'walk the dog' underwater
If the fish are tucked in tight or turned off, don't be afraid to add a small nose weight or a nail weight and fish the Slick Willy® like you would a worm or a lizard. Rig the Slick Willy® Wacky style and work the weed pockets. Watch it get eaten in a hurry as it glides down, looking for all the world like a real, dying baitfish. All of these are killer actions for Largemouth!

Skip the baits 30 to 40 feet under docks, overhanging trees and bushes to get at fish that have hardly been touched. Areas where you just cannot throw a conventional lure. You can fish a dock much more thoroughly, in less than half the time of conventional methods and that will put you in front of twice as many fish, in any given time period. Because the fish don't know the UPC codes of these baits off by heart and because you present them above the fish, in their preferred attack position, they get bitten much more often. You can often catch 2 to 4 times as many fish from under docks using this method.

Swim the bait subsurface on a darter jig or with a nail-weight, to fish the mid-depths. Work the bait on bottom on ballhead, stand-up or football jig to mimic a feeding baitfish. Put on a medium heavy nose-weight and use like a jigging spoon around weedbeds or on deeper structure.

The Slick Willy® also works great on a Carolina Rig. Instead of just dragging behind the sinker, the bait will pop up off the bottom, into the fish's line of sight, and then, hover for a few seconds before gliding slowly forward.

Ribbed Willy®- Use the Ribbed Willy® when the water is murky or when fishing around cover. It has all the same, great actions as the Slick Willy®, but the ribs create a different vibration pattern. The extra, low-level vibration the Ribbed Willy® gives off as the water moves across it or as it rubs over cover, helps the fish to find them easier when visibility is reduced.

Atomic Wedgie®- The Atomic Wedgie's ability to promote reaction strikes from turned-off fish is uncanny. By popping it off bottom on a slack line, the Atomic Wedgie® will come up and then turn around and go back to its starting point. We have lots of underwater footage which shows that even fish in a negative feeding mood, will move toward the Atomic Wedgie® when it pops up. The bait then turns around, swims right into their faces and they will just open their mouths and eat it, without thinking.

The Atomic Wedgie® is a phenomenal bait for extracting Largemouth when they are tight to cover. The action is the fishy equivalent of waving a juicy cheeseburger right under their noses! They find it hard to turn down. In water less than 5 feet deep, use the Atomic Wedgie® unweighted. If you are fishing deeper, use the lightest weight you can. It is the seductive, turn-tail, gliding action that causes the fish to attack, too much weight will kill this action.

Spinnerbaits- Spinnerbaits are an extremely versatile bait for Largemouth Bass. In clear water, use a colour which will closely resemble their forage. Fish them at a speed where you can keep the spinnerbait at the level the fish are at.

Largemouth are not so finnicky about biting spinnerbaits as Smallies often are. This is because they live in areas with lots of vegetation and shadows. Therefore, they often feel the spinnerbait pulsating towards them, well before they can see it. It is rare that they will get a really good look at the spinnerbait before they commit to biting.

However, most of the time, we add any one of the Black Mamba® baits as a trailer and add a great deal of value to spinnerbaits. The idea of using such a large bait as a trailer, is not so outlandish as it might seem. If you think about how fish usually attack spinnerbaits, 95% of the time, it is from below and behind. When they come up on a spinnerbait tipped with a Black Mamba® bait, instead of seeing a chunk of whirring metal, they see what looks like the belly of a baitfish. Fish usually engulf the bait and so, you do not need trailer hooks.

Because so many fishermen use spinnerbaits, fish can become conditioned to them and stop biting them. The addition of a Black Mamba® bait, gives the fish something different and more natural to look at.

Wild Willy®- Should be worked anywhere from slow to fast on the surface in any conditions.

Sometimes, Largemouth will show a preference for a slightly more erratic presentation and/or a slimmer profile. In these instances, we use a Wild Willy®.

If there are a number of fish in an area and the bite slows, we will change baits and/or change the hook position and line tension to make the bait react differently. A slightly different action or look will usually make the fish start biting again.

Jigs- Jigs are a big favourite with Largemouth Bass fishermen and with big Largemouth too. Flipping jigs are most often used with a pork trailer, often call a "jig and pig", or with a soft-plastic crayfish imitation. There's no doubt that they catch fish but I believe that they have two basic flaws which limit their effectiveness;

1. Again, a lot of fishermen use them, so it's usually a bait that fish have not only seen many times before but it's one they have been caught on too. Fish might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but they learn pretty quickly if something is likely to harm them.
2. They plummet. Nothing in nature, that Bass eat, drops like a stone, neither should your bait.

If I am fishing thick weeds, I much prefer to use a Ribbed Willy® in either black to represent a leech or one of our natural, fishy colours, to represent a baitfish. If you consider that bass eat baitfish 90% of the time, this makes much more sense than using a seasonal, occasional crayfish imitating bait, for example. I also try to closely match the baitfish that they are eating. I use these together with a screw-in, rattling noseweight, like the ones Gambler make. I find that they slide through the cover much easier than a bulky flipping jig. They glide seductively and 'swim' right underneath the cover, even with a heavy noseweight. Often, they 'swim' right into the fish's face, promoting a reaction strike, instead of just dropping like a stone in front of the fish.

When I am fishing more open cover such as docks and downed trees, I will often switch to an Atomic Wedgie® with a small noseweight, usually around 1/16 oz to 1/8 oz. I can work this combination very easily through any tangles of branches. I get the added benefit of the pronounced turn-tail action of the Atomic Wedgie®. By working the bait and twitching it on a slack line, I can often tease negative fish into biting as a reaction strike, as the Atomic Wedgie® swims back into their face.

Tubes- Tubes usually work best with the lightest weight you can get away with for the conditions you are fishing. In shallow, clear water use a 1/8 oz jig head, for a slow seductive flutter. In windy conditions or deeper water, use a heavier head, perhaps up to 3/8 oz, to keep contact with the bottom. A good all round weight is
3/16 oz to 1/4 oz.

I really like to use glider weights when fishing around weeds or cover. These are flat weights which fit inside the tube. They have a hole near the top through which you pass your offset-shank worm hook. You then Texas-rig the tube to make it weedless. That way, you don't spend valuable time clearing bits of weed off your hook.

Also, we have found that very natural colours will catch you more fish than say white or bubblegum or other unnatural colour schemes. Tubes should be fished a little more aggressively in murky water, so that the fish can find them easier.

Crankbaits- Even though crankbaits are responsible for catching a lot of Bass and making a lot of big name tournament anglers very wealthy, I have always had a problem with big fish thrashing about with a face full of razor-sharp treble hooks, so close to my hands!

That one personal gripe aside, crankbaits are a great search bait for finding fish in deeper water. In shallower water, I find that crankbaits pick up too much weed and so, I prefer a Slick Willy(r). I find if Largemouth are in 6 feet (more if the water is clear and is not clogged with weedgrowth, which prevents the fish from seeing the baits) of water or less, the advantages of using a Slick Willy® are that I don't have to keep pulling weeds off my bait and the fish won't spit them as they sometimes do with hard-plastic baits.

Buzzbaits- Draw explosive surface strikes with a buzzbait when the fish are active and sitting high in weedbeds or when the water is green because of an algal bloom. Buzzbaits are excellent baits for getting fish up but are dre4adfulk at hooking them. The reasons are that you use buzzbaits in low visibility conditions where the fish is deprived of its primary means of hunting; its eyesight. Plus, you have to fish them fast to keep them on the surface. Speed and poor visibility combined, are a recipe for disaster. Consequently, you are lucky to catch 3 fish out of 10 strikes.

Add a Black Mamba® bait as a trailer and you will catch a lot more fish. The addition of a Black Mamba® bait offers several benefits:

1. It adds weight so you can cast better and further.


2. The extra weight reduces the tendency of the buzzbait to stall when casting into the wind and thereby, reduces run-ons.


3. The Black Mamba® bait adds buoyancy so that you can now fish the buzzbait at about half the speed. This reduction in speed, combined with the better profile, results in 6 or 7 fish caught out of 10 strikes.

I prefer to use a small (about 1/8oz with a 1" or so diameter blade). This gives a more subtle presentation than a big, noisy buzzbait which can spook fish, especially in shallow water.

Lizards- Lizards are a great bait if the fish for sight fishing or if the fish are really spooky or turned off. They work because all of their little arms and legs move as though they are swimming when they move through the water. Work them slowly either weightless or with a very light noseweight, in shallow water The only downside with lizards are they must be fished very slowly, and therefore, you can cover very little water.

Plastic Worms- Plastic worms have probably been responsible for catching more Largemouth than any other bait. They obviously work because more fishermen use them than any other bait.

In my opinion, therein lies one of the few downsides of using worms; everybody uses them! In heavily pressured waters, where Bass are bombarded every day with worms, it is sometimes difficult to buy a bite with a worm. Bass will often completely ignore them with a "Been there, done that" kind of attitude. It is in situations like this where you need to show them something different. By zigging when everyone else is zagging, you will boat more fish.

We have found an Atomic Wedgie® more than competes with worms and other finesse baits by offering a seductive, in-your-face, gliding action that the fish seem to find irresistible.

Topwater baits- I mention topwater baits only because they are very popular with many fishermen. And for very good reason, they certainly do catch fish. We have used spooks, twitchbaits, stickbaits and poppers but no longer use them. We find that the performance of the Black Mamba® baits is superior , on several levels, that competitive topwater baits are now redundant, as far as we are concerned.

Firstly, the natural, random, sinewy, gliding action of the Black Mamba® baits is so much more attractive to fish than the mechanical, 'wooden' action of topwater baits. Secondly, when fish grab the Black Mamba® baits, they will swim off and eat them because they feel natural. You can also throw the Black Mamba® baits into the thickest, nastiest crap in the lake with complete confidence as they are totally weedless. You don't have to deal with fish thrashing about with treble hooks all over their faces, as the Black Mamba® baits use only a single hook. Finally, and most importantly, they just simply catch more fish!

Soft-Plastic Jerkbaits- Again, I mention competitive soft-plastic jerkbaits baits only because they are very popular with many fishermen. And for very good reason, they certainly do catch fish. However, the reason Bill invented the Black Mamba® baits was because all the other slug-type and shad-imitating jerkbaits just would not give him the actions, the versatility or the fish-catching power he was looking for.

Most competitors' jerkbaits can only be used on relatively light equipment. They only have a single hooking option and only one action. The Black Mamba® baits can be used on anything from light spinning gear to Muskie tackle with heavy line and a steel leader, without completely destroying the action of the baits.

The Black Mamba® baits can be rigged pretty well any way you would rig any other competitive bait. You have several hooking options with the Black Mamba® baits, and all offer different fish-catching actions. The Black Mamba(r) baits will do everything the competitive baits will do, and a whole lot more besides. And all of those extras will catch you more fish.

I know that these are bold statements but I can assure you that they are all true. Anyone who has given the Black Mamba® baits an honest try, would agree with every word.

Slop Baits- Weedless plastic spoons, rats , frogs and the like, are used to fish lily pads and slop. Slop refers to weeds which break the surface, to floating mats of weeds and/or to floating debris blown into the shoreline. These lures are dragged slowly across the top and Bass explode from underneath to grab them. They certainly catch fish but they are low-percentage hook--up baits. The fact is that Bass are not the best shots in the world and they often miss them completely.

I have found that either a Slick Willy®, Ribbed Willy® or Wild Willy® does at least as good a job as these other baits in slop and does a far better job in lily pads