Hey everyone. I have a question that relates to schools of bait fish and what to throw when you see a school swimming your way. I was out fishing at one of the ponds near my house yesterday after work. I noticed huge "balls" of bait fish swimming out in the open water. Every couple of minutes a bass would dart in and devour these bait balls. I tried to get close enough to get a look at the bait and noticed a black line running down their sides (transluscent in the water except for that line). Could these by baby bass? I'm not too sure if they are baby bass, bluegill or shad. They are roughly 3" long and are schooling all over this pond. I know there are tons of bluegill in this pond but I thought most of the bluegills were bedding right now. So, my question is what would be a good bait to throw around these bait balls to try to trigger a strike? I'm thinking a curly tail grub on a jighead or something of that nature. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Oh yeah, I finally caught my first jig bass yesterday!! I'm pretty excited about that. I've been bass fishing for about three years now and never had the confidence in that bait to throw it. Well, now I do!!

I fish in an area with shad balling all over, and have done well throwing spoons, shad patterned cranks, white or white/red spinners with dual willow leaf blades, poppers and white jitterbugs. Throwing my lure past the ball and retrieveing it into the ball has worked well for me.

flukes and lipless cranks

Spinnerbaits and lipless cranks work well for me. Just make sure you give it an erratic retrieve. Bass will hit an injured fish first.

“Jump fishing” can be as easy as taking candy from a baby or it can be downright frustrating.

Last fall we were fishing a whitewater jump that ignored Hopkins Shorties, Tiny Flukes

and Spro Aruku Shads. We finally hooked two bass on a plastic worm…go figure!

This year during the post-spawn, I watched two anglers working a jump with everything in their box, but to no avail.

I suppose I should've told them that it was a “crappie jump”, but that would be meddling…right

When large crappies and white bass are balling up bait, they produce a surprising amount of whitewater

that fools anglers on a regular basis.

Roger

I always throw a fluke into bait balls or jumping fish or a wacky senko

probably just shad running all over the lake

try a weightless fluke or like how someone suggested a shad patterned lipless crank

make sure to use an erratic injured baitfish retrieve

LC Gunfish