Every few years, a new bait or new style of bait comes along that grabs the bass-fishing world by the tail and gives it a good shake.
Swim baits are one of those deals. They first got notice around the lakes in Southern California that produce all of those huge bass. The Castaic swim bait, which was designed to look like a rainbow trout, was the first one that anybody really heard much about — it was the first one I ever fished.
In the past year or so, just about every company that makes soft-plastic baits has come out with a swim bait: Berkley, Strike King, Bass Magic, Gary Yamamoto. The Yamamoto saltwater swim bait is the one I use, but there are a lot of them out there now.
The reason? They catch big bass. And May is one of the best months to use a swim bait.
Not too many of the swim baits that have showed up on tackle-shop shelves in the last year or so look much like the Castaic bait. Most of them look something like what we used to call a Sassy Shad — a big chunk of plastic that looks like a big baitfish. Most of them have the blunt or stump tail that kicks a lot when you retrieve it. They come in all sizes; I use a 6-inch bait most of the time, but they’re made up to eight or nine inches.
What makes May such a good month to use swim baits is that you’ve got a lot of fish still in relatively shallow water, but more important, you’ve got bass that are looking up to the surface. There are a lot of fry up high in the water column — bass and crappie, especially — and you’ll have herring and shad spawning sometime this month, splashing around close to the bank. So bass are naturally going to be paying attention to what’s going on over their heads.
A swim bait has really become one of our top baits when bass are postspawn — because they’re looking up toward the surface so much. Now, as summer approaches and they move out to deeper water, you’ll go back to fishing a crankbait or something else you can work close to the bottom. But when they’re looking up, especially when they’re suspended, a swim bait is tough to beat.
There are a lot of ways to fish a swim bait. My favorite is to rig them weedless on a weighted hook. I like a 5/0 or 6/0 Owner hook. The size weight I use depends on how I want to fish the bait. If I want to wake it or fish it just below the surface, I’ll use a 1/16th-ounce weight. If I want to fish it deeper, or if the wind is really blowing, I’ll move up to a 1/8th- or ¼-ounce weight. I think you really need to have the weight on the shaft of the hook, because it acts as a rudder — it keeps the bait in line during the retrieve. With all the action the tail has, it’s pretty easy for it to kick out if you’re not careful. Having the weight on the hook takes care of that.
Like a lot of the western baits that have made a big impact on fishing in the east and south, most fishermen figured that they were only good for fishing in clear water. That’s not true of the swim bait, because there’s so much vibration from the tail. That’s what amazed me when I first started fishing them. You don’t need to have 10 feet of visibility to catch fish; you could catch them on a swim bait when you only have two feet of visibility, in stained water.
The other thing that surprised me was the variety of sizes of bass you can catch on a big swim bait. If you think of most bass baits, you catch big fish on big baits, but you don’t catch numbers of fish. That isn’t how it works with a big swim bait. The bait targets big bass — it’s so big it almost has to. But my sons Parker and Peyton have caught plenty of pound-and-a-half bass out of our pond on swim baits. It will produce big bass — and good numbers of bass.
I like to try and match the color of the swim baits I’m using to the predominant forage in a lake. If Peyton and Parker and I are fishing in our pond, I tend more toward purple backs and other bluegill colors. If I’m fishing a reservoir that has a lot of blueback herring, I’ll fish the blueback colors. If I’m fishing a reservoir where there are a lot of threadfin or gizzard shad, I’ll go with shad colors, natural colors.
Because swim baits are big, bulky baits, and because I’m fishing them weedless, I need to be able to make a good hookset, even though the fish will hit them hard. So I fish swim baits on 15-pound Berkley fluorocarbon line, and I use a 7-foot, medium-heavy All-Star baitcasting rod. Because swim baits are such a happening thing, a lot of companies, including All-Star, are looking at making rods specifically for swim baits.
So if you’ve got a chance this month, and you were planning on fishing topwater baits, give a swim bait a chance. It’s pretty easy to fish, because you’re just giving it a steady retrieve most of the time, maybe with a little twitch here or there. And it will give you a chance not only at quality bites, but a lot of bites.
Davy Hite is a 42-year-old native of Saluda who lives in Ninety Six. He has fished professionally since 1993. He was the BASS Angler of the Year in 1997 and 2002, and he won the 1999 Bassmasters Classic and the 1998 FLW Tour Champion-ship. He is sponsored by Triton boats, Evinrude outboards, All-Star rods, Pfleuger reels, Berkley Trilene, Yamamoto Baits, Owner hooks and Solar Bat sunglasses.
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