In years past I have used a senko an awful lot. This year I only really got back around to fishing them once I got home for the holidays. The rest of the year, I’ve been throwing other stuff. Even when I started using them, the senko has been kind of a disappointment this year.

 

What lure are you using less this year? What lures that you rely on have failed you this year? 

Crank baits almost never.

Chatterbait/Senko/Deep crank.

 

Mostly used lipless/spinnerbait/Squarebill/fluke in place of these.  Also fished weightless trick worms more this year and had awesome success.

 

All three bait categories have caught me nice fish and plenty of them but for some reason they just didn't get tossed.

Crankbaits for me too. Didn't throw a crankbait all year.  Not because they disappointed me in any sense. I just never found that a crankbait was right for any situation I was facing.

Jerkbait, chatterbox, frog, a-rig, none played a role in my fishing tournaments much this year.  Few fish on them but not as much as past years,  but it happens. Goes through changes all the time.  Part of adapting to conditions. 

I used a walking bait a lot less this year than in the past. Usually they’re a seasonal bait (spring and fall), but I opted for a popper over a walker for topwater even early and late in the season. Barely threw a lipless this year either. Hard to put down the spinnerbait when I’m targeting middle of the water column. 

All of them.   I wasn't able to go fishing very often this year.  When I did go fishing, I caught fewer fish on crankbaits than in years past.  I still gave them a shot, but top water, spinnerbaits and worms were my best producers.  

Spooks. They were a big success last year for me, but this year weightless flukes stole the show.

Coming up on 10 years of no senko/stick bait.  Curly tail worms, showerblows, grubs, and s-waver/shine glides round out the used less list, straight tail and chad shad kind of took over confidence and I just forgot about grubs.  Never really got on a topwater bite this year other than frogs in the matted slop.

 

scott

Frogs, bladed jigs, and spinnerbaits. I tried them off and on but the bites just weren't there for these baits. 

Crankbaits and spinnerbaits were my biggest disappointments this year. I only caught one small bream on a crankbait and nothing on spinnerbaits.

Chatterbait, Senkos, Frogs.  Chatterbaits were replaced by Spinnerbaits, seems like everyone’s been moving away from spinnerbaits for so long that spinnerbaits were new to the bass again.  Senkos were replaced by jigs, and Frogs were replaced by Swimming worms.  The last two were more due to the fact that we had so much rain this year everything was flooded for most of the summer and I fish rivers a majority of the time in the summer.

I stayed away from soft plastics as much as I could this year and focused on treble hooks.  

A-Rig for sure.

Oh, and glide baits.

But that's mostly because I sold them all last year.

Come at me bro . . . 

A-Jay

 

Frogs, muskie Jitterbug, Gunfish all used much less. Crankbaits very little. Biggest disappointment for me was A-rig & Jackhammer - bites just weren’t happening. Have been spending more time on a different public lake so there’s an ongoing learning curve for that. The new lake has produced some high quality fish for us though.

 

@A-Jay He said he’d be coming soon to work out the A-rig & glide bait issues….

 

Lunker Punker

Topwater didn't produce a single fish for me in 2023.

The Menace grub. It seems to be getting less hits than in the past, not sure why.
 

With the bite up north being ultra sensitive, I used less spins till I switched to a 1/8 from a 1/4 ounce bait. 
 

The weirdest was one day the father in law slayed them one on the 1/2 ounce orange craw RES, and the next day he couldn’t buy a bite on it. I dragged out a 1/4 ounce orange craw RES while he was blanking and got 46 fish on it. Next day that bite was dead lol. Despite this I ended up with a record number of largies that week. 

Like most years, I never threw a tube at all. I also didn't fish a lizard that much this year, which is odd because a curly tail worm and lizard are basically interchangeable for my tastes and I had good luck a few months back with some old Culprit worms on a split shot rig. The lizards will come out again soon, though. 

Crank baits, don’t think I put any in the water this year. 

I didn't throw top water walking baits hardly at all this year. I caught a lot with them last year. 

I almost never throw any finesse type baits that almost all on here use. 
Hardly ever use light line spinning gear for anything. 
 

 

 

 

 

Mike

Never threw a Crankbait, C-Rig, drop shot all year.   Mainly relied on Wacky's, top water's, chatterbait's.

Spinnerbaits

2 hours ago, Mike L said:

I almost never throw any finesse type baits that almost all on here use. 
Hardly ever use light line spinning gear for anything. 
 

 

 

 

 

Mike

I love it. While there are some days that I will actually start with something like a shaky head on 8lb test or resort to it…. Especially in the summer….. You will not catch me with a true finesse setup very often. On the right type of lake, that shaky head can be guaranteed bass however.