ok heres my scenario i get to the lake. i always have my spinnerbait on usually a crank, sometimes a jig but them i choose a soft plastic. and my problem arises. i have worms, beavers, senkos, ikas. how do i choose what to use.  especially the beavers vs worms i use both weighted but i can never decide what id rather use or why? how should i choose?

Ryan

For every situation, there are always a few lures that can be used to match the conditions.  I think it boils down to what you are confident with and what the fish want on your particular body of water.  Some days a weighted t-rigged worm sinks too fast for them to bite, so you use a weightless senko or fat ika.  Other days you need a heavy weight to get down through thick vegetation and a worm may slip down through the brush better that a bulky plastic bait.  If your lake has a lot of crawfish, then maybe a tube or plastic craw is a good idea to match the hatch.  Some lures just work at particular lakes.  Truman lake, southeast of Kansas City, is known for giving up bass to t-rigged and c-rigged lizards.  There are no hard and fast rules.

MY why depends on the what... the what structure am i fishing. Taking two places that i fish and looking at them, they are drastically different. One is full of aggresive rarely fished bass and is covered by pads. A Trig is what i throw 75 percent of the time, spinnerbait over some submerged vegetation. The second place being a larger reservoir with rock as most of the cover. There i throw cranks past, through, and around piles. Backup is usually a fluke or senko.

Ryan,

There is a large variety of different soft plastics on the market. (Maybe too much)

Honestly I think location, seasonal pattern, and weather are more important.

There are some days when bass will neglect different baits, but it does come down to confidence and knowledge.

I remember when I went on my smallie trip last month...In the morning we caught over thirty smallies on different baits. Tubes, spider jigs, sabertail bugs..but by the afternoon they would only take tubes jigged off the bottom.

Its all about what your confident in, and being able to adapt.

well lets hope we can figure em out tomorrow on hapatcong