No easy panacea or lure will help you catch 5+ lb bass consistantly.

If you want to catch big bass you must fish for them....where they are located.

Suggest that you read In Pursuit of Giant Bass by Bill Murphy to start with.

Tom

This is the best advice there is for catching big fish. My fishing parter and I are both trophy hunters, we only target bass over 5+lbs which in NC is respectable, of course we are going after bigger but we can catch a lot of fish that size. He understand big bass behavior better than I do, when fishing the same lures (big swim baits) on the same water, he consistently out fishes me, by fish size anyway. There have been days where I caught a ton of 2.5-3lbers but he has been sticking all the fat girls. It should be noted that he is my co-angler so he has the "dreaded" back of the boat, a lot of it has to do with the book mentioned. He has read the book a ton of times, and knows where the big girls should be hiding.

 

So in summery if you want to catch big fish, start targeting them. It is quite different than regular bass fishing as their behavior is different. If you have the time, patience, and budget slowly get into swimbaiting, read that book, and read as much as you can thats written by other trophy anglers like Mike Long, and Butch Brown

I would go with a mepps Anglia #3 inline spinner, silver blade with a brown trailer.

When the bass bite is on with your 3#ers if it slows down I would switch to a #4 or #5

Anglia in the same colors. I find that the larger bass will come to see what the smaller bass are doing but they won't strike the smaller bait. They will hit the larger bait. Big bait big bass.

I found out fishing from shore in the evenings I couldn't get into the larger bass. Then I switched to the early AM and the big gals were there.

Night fish.