"match the hatch" is a fly fishing term.  Trout are very selective feeders.  If there is a hatch of #12 mayflies than that is what you better be fishing, or go home.

Bass are opportunistic feeders.  Yes they have their preferences.   We all know that, but there are no shad in my home lake yet some days the shad finish lures are the killers.

Where I'm at,the main forage is shad.I always try to throw something that is the same size as the shad,especially in the fall.Most of the shad pods that travel to the backs of the creeks here are between 1.5" and 2.5" long.Over the past few years,I have noticed that these small shad all have a faint yellow stripe on their sides.If I'm fishing cranks and cant get a bite,I will put a yellow stripe on my shad color cranks with a marker or a hi-liter.That yellow stripe,as little a detail as it may be,makes a difference sometimes.

I try to match the hatch when conditions call for it,(when the bite seems tough).But when the bass are "feeding up",I dont think color and size have all that much to do with it.

"match the hatch" is a fly fishing term. Trout are very selective feeders. If there is a hatch of #12 mayflies than that is what you better be fishing, or go home.

I'm glad you brought that up Avid.

Trout fishing is an art form. Trout have extremely keen eyesight and will reject any lure that drags even slightly in the current.

More than matching the hatch, the fly-fisherman also has to match the larval nymphs that occur before the hatch,

the drones and the spent flies after the hatch. By comparison, bass are like bulls in a china shop > >

Roger

I always try matching the hatch, though of course you can catch plenty of bass not doing that. I believe I can do better doing that. Even though I might be presenting one of a million copies of prey, it's the way it's presented that makes it stand out. For instance, a bass will far more readily go after  crippled shad than chase down 1000 healthy shad. So MY shad falls helplessly and will almost always find itself not in the safety of a ball of shad, alone, cut away from the crowd, very vulnerable, especially if diabled, dying, pitiful looking, or the other extreme, madly trying to escape a bass. A bass has spent its life observing "normal" in their prey. A 3" shad among thousands of 2" shad can cause a bass to beware. It isn't natural. All the shad will be within about 5 mm in length variance by age one. The bass key in on normal in such factors.

Bass are opportunistic feeders. In the absence of their favorite prey they will scout for alternatives. If it will fit in their mouth they will eat it unless they see something "wrong", unnatural about it. If they usually see crayfish, they don't see them jumping or swimming. They se them crawl at a snail's pace. If they never see a crayfish they are likely to try it anyway. So if t lake has crayfish it's in your best interest to move them like the real thing.

I wonder what convinced you there are no crayfish there. I've never found a body of water supporting fish that didn't have at least one of about 400 possible nationwide species. I even have them in my yard! You are not likely ever to see one in the water, being perfectly camoflaged. But you might try trapping one with a simple screen wire cage and a strip of bacon rolled around a carrot for bait. I believe one reason to doubt their absence in a lake is so many fishermen use live crayfish for bait, and many get off the hook to live there. Some lakes now have undesirable species threatening native crayfish because of introductions. They migrate over land, and are carried by streams and floods, so few water bodies are immune to crayfish. You could also ask your DNR experts about that, and get specific species lists so you can look them up and begin using their colors.

Jim

I tihnk a lot of people get confused about "matching the hatch" and think that it refers to having every single thing about the lure be like the common baitfish in the body of water.  It can be color, it can be movement, it can be flash, it can be size, it can be sound..or a combination of any of those things.  Thats what I consider matching the hatch.  The game is figuring out what it requires on any given day to "match the hatch" and be successful.  The main thing I concern myself with are size and color.  I believe those to be the important parts of "matching the hatch" simply because no two fish will always move the same way or flash the same way or anything like that.  

Bass though, they'll try to eat almost anything at least once.  If they find that its more UNpleasurable than pleasurable, then I think they stop eating..but if their experiences are more pleasure than not, they'll never stop.  

One dichotomy to the whole match the hatch thing is...all things being considered as far as the rule goes, how would a bass ever become "tired" of a certain lure or pattern or whatever..if you're matching the hatch?  I mean if I'm using bluegill patterns and what not and catching bass after bass, they surely can't eventually stop eating bluegill.  Theres a lot of "myths" regarding fishing, in my opinion.

I wonder what convinced you there are no crayfish there. I've never found a body of water supporting fish that didn't have at least one of about 400 possible nationwide species. I even have them in my yard! You are not likely ever to see one in the water, being perfectly camoflaged. But you might try trapping one with a simple screen wire cage and a strip of bacon rolled around a carrot for bait. I believe one reason to doubt their absence in a lake is so many fishermen use live crayfish for bait, and many get off the hook to live there. Some lakes now have undesirable species threatening native crayfish because of introductions. They migrate over land, and are carried by streams and floods, so few water bodies are immune to crayfish. You could also ask your DNR experts about that, and get specific species lists so you can look them up and begin using their colors.

One of the places I am speaking of is a private farm pond. I believe it was dug out and used for cattle at one point. That hasn't been the case for decades now. It was stocked with bluegill, catfish, and bass well before I was capable of fishing (about age 4 or 5...I'm 23 now.). I don't believe the pond was stocked with any type of forage such as crayfish, minnows, shad or anything like that. So that is one of the places that I am fairly sure there aren't any of the above. Lots of frogs. LOTS of frogs...some really small to some massive bullfrogs. But just to make sure there aren't any crayfish in there I'll try setting up some traps to make sure.

As far as I know nobody has stocked crayfish in my urban yard, but they wreck my lawn every year. Crayfish just happen. Look around the edge of the pond for telltale deep clean holeswith a mount of crumbly dirt. They come and go there, the other end of the tunnel in the water.

On the issue of bass not responding to "match the hatch", they change feeding moods sometimes several times a day. If they have bream in mind they go harrass bream, not keying in on a craw imitator. They get very particular just like deer do, passing up white oal acorns in favor or red oak acorns, then when the reds are gone clean up the white. A squirrel might only eat a pine seed today ignoring other favorites nearby. It might be as simple as a craving for something they need at the moment. There could be times a bass MUST have a high dose of protein from crayfish that's easy to catch but harder to spot, then fat from a bream that's easy to spot but hard to catch. It might be a particular prey is chosen only because it is easier to catch at a time the bass is starved, sort of like how we get fast food when in a hurry and not wanting to invest time in a lingering meal or cooking.

I make sure spinnerbait blades are the physical size of shad or small bream like eating size bluegills or redears. I also provide a matched trailer size. As prey grows larger I up the bait sizes. An exception to all that is when I'm fishing a lake known to have trophy bass, in which I'll opt for large baits regardless of prey sizes, but in winter and at other times when ever they are feeding aggressively, IOW, not during the earliest pre-spawn.

Jim

"Match the Hatch" also means knowing what bass are eating any particular time. If crayfish you can feel the lumps in their belly and find stains in their mouths. Schools of bass breaking surface are usually feeding on shad. All that helps determine what bait to tie on. Maybe it would be better to say "match the forage". I rarely find two types of forage in a stomach. It's all crayfish, all bream, all shad, all snake, all salamander, etc. If the water is 60 degrees over shalow rocky bottom with decaying and fresh growing vegetation, the surface chopped by a little wind to help hide them, crayfish will be more active and probably bass knowing that and going after them. If so they will ignore bream off a main point.  I'll often take a little time visiting the fish cleaning station at a ramp to perform my nasty habit of inspecting fish stomach contents before launching, or ask folks cleaning fish what they found. I got that habit from doing stuff like that taking fish surveys. It saves me a lot of experimenting on the water and eliminates a lot of water. If I see 2" green crayfish with orange claws I know to hook up some 2" craws on jigs and dip them in orange dye. I know some pros who set out traps before a tournament to determine species, sizes and colors to use once crayfish activity is suspected. I also watch the shoreline for piles of crayfish remains from raccoons feeding on them, constantly turning rocks over for the delicacies. They also keep a sharp eye out for shad to look for signs of a splash of chartreuse or blue or whatever, then incorporate those colors in their baits. So I do that. I take on any habit that helps. Match up with what bass are feeding on while you are out there.

Jim

One thing I noticed on a Table Rock trip is that I was catching smallmouth on a smoke color tube.I was dragging it slowly on the bottom(craw pres).After catching about a 3 lber. ,it spit out a crawfish in the boat.It was a dark green w/orange claws.I was matching presentation but not color.Maybee it is because of the many different colored species of crawfish?

There would be several species in Table Rock. Any of the natural colors will help a bass spot an otherwise perfectly camoflaged crayfish on bottom. If it can't be seen the bass relies on slight movement and any clicking sounds from the claws tearing food apart. If the bite is that slow, say when crayfish are mud colored, I'll add a bobber stopper to the line and attach a small rattle so I can rattle without moving the craw much. Twitching the line makes just enough noise to get bass over to the bait.

Jim

You add a rattle to your line?What kind?

As far as I know nobody has stocked crayfish in my urban yard, but they wreck my lawn every year. Crayfish just happen.

Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans. Unless your backyard is constantly wet and boggy,

the likelihood of crayfish in your lawn is pretty low.

Maybe you're referring to mole crickets.

Roger

When I was a kid here I used to fish them out of the holes using bacon on a string. At night they come out to raid gardens. Locals call them lawn lobsters. They are crayfish. Some species can live out of wet environments, but have very deep burrows that reach groundwater. My yard is dry with shale under the soil, but the mounds are everywhere. A creek once cut through here before it was tiled and covered.

About the line rattle. I make those up in advance. I cut off a 1" piece of 1/4" heat shrinkable tubing. I run it onto an upholsterer's needle and shrink one end almost tight on the shaft. You don't want it to shrink too tight or it won't slip off. Drop a metal type rattle inside it. Shrink the other end, slide it off when cool. I make up a dozen at a time. Put a bobber stopper on the main line. Poke the main line through the rattle, tie to bait, pull stopper down. Sometimes using very thin line I tie a rubber band on the main line instead of stopper, using a square knot. With jig on bottom and semi slack line, pluck the line while hand-lining. I always bottom jig by holding line out from the rod, working the line.

You can buy C-rig line rattles that look a lot nicer but they are not cheap and are a little too big for me for jigging craws.

Jim