Hogs_n_Logs

Primary thing thats really crystallized this year for me is 9 times out of 10 trying to "feed" the bass a lure is the best way to turn off a strike.

T-rig big creature bait is my go-to for pads, but unlike most I go light(1/4 oz) and instead of trying to punch, I cast past were I want to fish then drag the bait into a gap till it falls, then "hang" my line on a pad and work it, rinse repeat. Theyll also hit when you drag it across the top, they usually miss but in that case you just let the bait fall and they almost always hammer it again. A jig with a big trailer works good for this too, but were I fish a t-rig catches less of the pad adjacent vegetation. I typically use a big creature bait that has alot of visual and water displacement impact, if you get their attention they will typically eat it. Were I fish pads, the bottom usually isnt good, the fish seem to feed up or lateral, so with punching heavy weight T-rigs I feel like you have to pinpoint crash it down really close to the fish to get the reaction strike or nothing, were as with the method above you can draw them in keeping the bait in the strike zone or when dragging across the top. My absolute favorite lure for this is the Nories Big escape twin, but they are hard to find and pricey in the states, honestly any plastic with a large profile will get the job done. Almost every year my biggest, healthiest fish are out of pads.

Most of my jerkbait fish get one hook right on the lip, and one of the others somewhere on its outside mouth/face . Smaller bass under 1.5lb-ish do take a thrashing sometimes, but I rarely if ever have had a situation were I'm sure they're mortally wounded or even close. I dont recall ever gut hooking a jerkbait fish. However I once half flayed alive a 25inch hammer-handle pike that got side hooked. Like usual it hit on slack line, the next jerk it felt like I hookset into a submerged bath towel. Perfectly de-gloved a 2 baseball card area of its side. Put it out of its misery and attempted to make some fish tacos but that unfortunately didn't go well.

Buzzjet is a ton of fun to fish. I really like "weak" action wake baits too like the Nishine Abino that are meant to be fished with really soft reeling/rod input. Theres those times like early morning were it seems like topwater is the go to but you dont get bites or you get weak trailing strikes, and these weaker action baits that dont put off too much water disturbance but still have quite a bit of action seem to work for me during those times.

The Tokyo Rig(aka "cherry rig") is another Japanese technique that was developed for a very specific situational reason in Japanese bass fishing that was later hyped and pushed in the US market but in reality is somewhat limited. It was developed by anglers in the greater Tokyo area because in the urban and semi urban rivers in that locale there is often this rope mesh/netting stuff they cover large swathes of rock/cement bottom presumably as an anti-erosion measure. The Tokyo rig was developed because while this mesh netting on the hard bottom attracts huge amounts of freshwater shrimp and crawfish that the bass love, regular t-rigs, drop shots and power shots would get stuck in it and snag. It is seldom used outside of this scenario/region in the country of its origin. That isnt to say it has zero utility outside of that situation, @casts_by_fly mentions some, but in most scenarios a power shot will do the same thing.

Nice fish, and wasnt implying fish wont eat it on the bottom, just that the reason these things originated is to be so light that with a trailer they can easily be fished above the bottom, so not really ideal for bottom vs a regular jig or t-rig. Agree that fishing these things is fun, something similar I like doing especially on new bodies of water is using a smaller sized rapala countdown or other small minnow bait on a spinning setup and just seeing what bites.

The japanese dudes who originated this style of lure rarely (if ever) bottom bounce these things like with a conventional jig, in fact they came about because they wanted to do the opposite. Its used as a freshwater shrimp(extremely prevalent forage in Japan) presentation to kind of suspend/drift and twitch while sight fishing or pitching into gaps and holes in emergent cover/trash piles. I honestly dont think finesse jigs have a ton of utility for LMB in the states, they catch dinks but dont have the profile to entice quality fish, and if you want something with the same action but bigger profile a no sinker texas or wacky presentation work alot better. For instance Taku Ito uses finesse jigs constantly in Japan to the point its kind of a signature technique for him over there, but almost never on the BASS trial. That said its still a jig aka can be fished a million different ways, perhaps in some area were bass really key in on some kind of small aquatic bug/crustacean. Probably killer for some SMB waters and crappie too.

Not to say any of those are terrible baits by any means but the reason most "hyped" or "expensive" lures is not because the bass "want" it more than any other. I see this line of thinking time and time again. Lures are not items at the trough in the bass buffet, they are tools that are manipulated by the angler. The upside to the "best" lures is often that they have consistent + easy to impart ACTION that triggers bites, along with excellent fishability, and the combination of these results in higher efficiency of catching fish. In the same way that harbor freight snip clipper will cut stuff just fine, but if you are using that tool day in and day out 10/10 people will prefer knipex. Of course a bass isnt actively inspecting a lures minute details. Any hardbait is the same as a lump of wood/plastic/metal if it isnt moving. The difference between "great" lures and those that are simply good or medoicre is the ability of these lures to be fished consistently and efficiently with action that triggers strikes. The 110(especially the +1) and a handful of other jerkbaits stand above the rest. I have tried many, the 110, Jackall Rerange 110, and shimano world minnow offer incredible consistent easy to control action. I have also caught fish on a stunna and x-rap, but they dont FISH as well as the above. IME both the stunna and x-rap have too much water resistance and maybe a less consistent balance, so on the twitch they sometimes "drag" rather than dart. With all that said, the Jackall Rerange 110 is IMO the best fishing jerkbait around, has a better weight transfer system because it allows you to twitch up and not lose action, and is about 10USD cheaper than the 110. An absolutely killer technique you can use over heavily submergent vegitation on drop offs is start working the bait up towards the surface, which is not possible with other jerkbaits because the casting system weight will slide into the tail of the lure.

If you are getting frustrated and have considering quitting cause of some slow days on the water, and then blame your struggles on some perceived epidemic of meat fisherman harvesting tons of bass, and are rejoicing because you think FFS will now magically allow you to catch fish, I think you'll catch less fish than you think even if you get FFS and will be out of the sport shortly. I'm not trying to be a.....forgot how to use English especially if you're a relatively new fisherman, but I can't really comprehend this kind of mindset when it comes to angling and Bass angling specifically. I should say I dont really mind FFS use in general or in tournys. But the main differentiator with bass fishing is that bass(especially LMB) are such a versatile species that can live in and adapt to nearly any freshwater environment, and thus the methods and strategy to try and catch the most and biggest fish is always a puzzle and can vary wildly, even within one water system. Almost every other sports fish species out there is fairly one dimensional in comparison, they are almost alway going to to be in a certain area of the water depending on the season of the year and only a couple lures are extremely effective and necessary. Primarily using FFS essentially makes Bass fishing that kind of fishing, on the whole were it is overwhelmingly effective is open deeper water and using a few techinques, which is an extremely narrow subset of bass habitat(this is also the reason why I'm not really anti-FFS). Whats gonna happen if you fish on a clear natural lake were anything above the thermocline is thick vegetation? How about a river that has a max depth of 8ft and fish holding near the bank in thick submerged junk? Bass fishing is great to me cause you can catch them 40ft down in open water or in 1ft of water hiding under an old car fender depending on were you are, and either can be the most effective way to catch them.

Fujita can fish just fine shallow without livescope, in fact thats what he grew up doing, off the bank and hes won major bank fishing tournaments(which are a big deal over there) against guys like Taku and bank fishing specialists. An area he is likely relatively inexperienced in is grass lakes, with the notable exception of Lake Biwa there are very few bass waters in Japan with a significant amount of submergent vegetation to the level were it becomes a pattern-able factor. If we look at his year, his only really bad finishes were Okachobee and Santee Cooper. There is nothing like Okachobee in Japan, I think he just got stumped there. I have no idea what Santee Cooper is like. In any case, Fujita is obviously exceptional at FFS, but hes not really known as a FFS specialist in Japan. He is ability to deduce conditions, pick the right pattern, then execute it with efficiency is why he dominated. He has won every which way in Japan and I think he'll show he can do it in the US too once he gets more TOW.

I found out a season ago that bass seemed to blow up on my frog when I simply reeled it in fast over the top of a big stretch of emergent surface vegetation in my lake, rather than trying to walk/pop the bait. I would miscast or feel like I was out of the strike zone, start reeling the bait to re-cast, and a fish would try to kill it halfway, even through thick layers of slop. I would get way more strikes this way, probably 5-1. However, working it this fast, the thickness of the surface vegetation, and the inherent nature of frog lures means they would never hook up. So now I just crank the frog fast over the whole muck field to get the fish to blow up and reveal its location, sling a senko into the hole in the muck made from the strike, and its an instant hit. Much faster and easier than flipping for me. The fish caught this are usually in the 3+lb class, which is quite large for this lake. This bite is not a guarantee obviously, most days the frog will get zero hits. A few different conditions have to align that I believe pushes these bigger, mean fish under the shallow emergent vegetation from an adjacent series of deeper points and gets them riled. Its usually late summer and always in the evening.

Thanks for the replies guys. Appreciate the detailed advice. Based on the responses, seems like as I suspected my positioning and technique is just bad. I've mostly been blindly dragging or lightly hopping the bait along the dropoff break which just tends to accumulate grass on my lead. Seems like the key is to be mindfully positioning the cast to then pop it out of/through the weeds to trigger strikes. A-jay, will definitely keep in mind to try further out from the dropoff break as well. For the first 15 years of fishing this lake I ONLY threw weightless senkos on $30 walmart combos that lived in the garage of the family cabin up there. Since getting more seriously into bass fishing a couple years back I've found other techniques like jerkbaits, soft swimbaits, and topwaters that cover more water and also in some conditions catch more/bigger fish. I've been struggling to do the same on deep bottom, hence this thread. The senko is still my go-to and always tied on though, like for many other bass anglers I assume.

To clarify, I'm mostly referring to fishing dropoffs and dropoff points, were the depth goes from grass flats which are 5-8ft, then drops off to 10-20 ft fairly rapidly, but the bottom is matted with vegetation throughout, even on the contour.

Whats the go to or any tips on fishing the bottom of the water column in areas that are 10-20feet down but have HEAVY matted vegetation(i think its mostly eurasian milfoil) thats matted on the bottom? I've been fishing this lake my whole life, recently more seriously, and I do well but know im missing fish in this part of the water. I've gotten some of my biggest fish just letting a weightless senko drop down there but this technique is not efficient. I have tried t-rigs, c-rigs, dropshot, jig, neko, i cant build up any confidence with them, especially since they pull up a wad of veg every other cast even 15 feet deep. I see guys kill it with those things on youtube etc but most seem to be fishing deep areas that have sparse or no veg compared to the stuff that builds up way deep in these crystal clear northern natural lakes. I'm going to keep trying to refine my technique with the dropshot and neko, as in theory they are perfect for this, but I'd like to hear what others that fish stuff like this have to say.