Being a southern swimbait enthusiast I get a lot of emails from folks east of the mighty Mississippi on how to effectively fish for Trophy Fish with swimbaits.  Let me first say that I consider a trophy fish the top 5% of the fish in your lake.  Meaning a 5lber might be a trophy fish in some lakes while in others it might be a teen fish.  It all depends on the body of water that you fish,  but the swimbait approach is very much the same with a few possible twists in my opinion.  A good way to find out what a trophy fish is on your local pond is to look at tournament standings and find out what the big fish weights look like.  I would take the biggest big fish winner over the last few years and try to beat it by a pound or so and do it as often as you can.  Keep your standards HIGH at all times and DO NOT settle or fall in that GOOD fish rut.  If 8lbers are a trophy fish don’t be satisfied catching 6 and 7lbers.   As a trophy hunter you want to shoot for the biggest of the biggest bass that lives in your lake and continue to raise the bar even higher. 

The biggest mistake I see by anglers is they think that they are PIG hunting because they are throwing swimbaits.  Just to make things perfectly clear I catch BIG fish not because I use “swimbaits”.  I catch BIG fish because I use BIG swimbaits.  To be brutally honest with you I will almost NEVER throw small swimbaits (smaller than 7 inches (more like smaller than 8 inches)   It’s cute…  You might as well be throwing a crankbait or a spinnerbait as you can accomplish almost the same thing.  

I call 6 inchers (or smaller)  a swimbait with training wheels because I do think you need to start off small to gain confidence in swimbait fishing as it’s part of the deprogramming process that you have to go through that  I will talk about later.  We all have to start somewhere and work our way up and eventually take off our training wheels and upgrade to the bigger baits.   The 4 and 5 inch baits are just “best sellers” size wise and that is why alot of manufacturers are making these baits.  They are great fish catchers, but there are better baits to trophy hunt with.   

In my opinion to become a true Trophy Hunter you have to go through a deprogramming process.  Everything you think you know about BIG BASS and BIG Baits you need to wipe the slate clean.   It’s  a very painful and long process and it’s certainly not for everyone.  Swimbait fishing is by far the hardest, most grueling technique in all of bass fishing.  It’s the iditarod of bass fishing techniques in my opinion and there is not close 2nd place in terms of difficulty.  You go weeks, sometimes months without a bite. But that one BIG BITE is what drives you and keeps you going.  One of my good swimbait friends told me one time that you will learn more about trophy fish in a month throwing BIG swimbaits than you will in 5 years throwing anything else.  I find that to be extremely true and valid.  You have to be a different breed to play this game and you have to be willing to sacrifice the time, shed the tears and blood to learn where and when to use these tools.  You cannot be afraid to bagel and you can only teach and learn so much by reading about swimbait fishing, but the true learning of the concept comes from actual time on the water. 

The analogy of GO BIG or GO HOME is my motto that you hear about often and most trophy hunters like myself have that same mindset.  Big to me is 8 inches +++ I throw baits up to 14 inches long and catch dinks on it OFTEN.  I don’t care what size of bait you are seeing or what you think the size of the forage on your lake has or how small of fish you think your trophy bass is.   I will still throw big swimbaits.  You are fishing for the biggest fish in the lake and If anything your big swimbait separates itself from the rest of the bait that is already there and gives the big bass something bigger to key in on.  A 2lb fish will  eat 14 inch swimbaits and they do it  often.  My question to you is does your home lake have 2lb fish?  If so you need to lose the “that bait is too big” mentality.  I am trying to weane off the 3, 4 and 5lbers to get to the 8’s and 9lb trophy fish in my lake.   A follow of a 5lber is no big loss if it’s not a trophy status fish. 

Take this analogy in  for an example. I have a jar of baby food on one table and a T bone steak on another.  Guess which table will get the adults??  Same exact thing with swimbaits.  Big baits do at times weane off smaller fish, but big fish often times  come in packs of big fish.  BIG bass are not efficient feeders.  They are lazy and they want their lunch to be BIG and worth their while and easy if they are going to exert that much energy to eat.  It’s all about reprogramming what you “think” you know about big bass and big baits.  You have to totally clean your hard drive and pretend you know nothing about big bass.  That is the hardest thing to do when learning how to fish big baits. I hear it all the time while  guiding “that’s too big”, “You fishing for whales”,  “do you need a gaff”  They can laugh all they want, but when they look at the big bass that I and my clients catch out of the so called DEAD SEA (moniker of my home lake) they know they can’t argue with my track record in trophy fishing out of a lake that most think is dead and full of dinks.  I’m not trying to be cocky or arrogant here, but you do have to have some kind of arrogance to psych yourself up for the task at hand because there is nothing easy about fishing for trophy fish.  You have to KNOW and have the confidence that you are going to catch that Trophy Fish. Because if you have any doubt you will not stick with the big bait program for long. The Trophy Fish get big because they are smart but you have to play things smart to be successful. 

If your dead set on throwing 6 inch swimbaits you might as well tie on a spinnerbait and a crankbait as they will achieve the same exact thing.  It’s the size of the bait that makes swimbait fishing what it is.  This is not to say you can’t catch big fish on cute baits, but I would argue very strongly that you could have achieved that same fish with almost any other lure.  The drawing power of a 8 inch bait is 10 fold the drawing power of a insert your favorite 6 inch or enter smaller bait name here ________.  Those trophy fish are laughing at us when you throw them a toothpick sized lure.  The trophy guys here in the South are at a huge advantage.  We don’t have alot of anglers throwing swimbaits like our western counterparts.  While most of our anglers downsize when things get tough there are a select few of us that upsize our offerings because everybody else is still stuck in that year long dink pattern.  If your new to swimbaits you just got taught 10 years of knowledge in 5 minutes and I will leave you with this last motto for you to ponder over.

“If you do what you’ve always done;  you will catch what you’ve always caught”

If you want to catch BIG FISH you need to ask yourself… Is it time to make a change in your fishing style?  Is it time to take your game to the next level?  Are you that lucky one or two fish wonder?   Don’t ever be complacent with trophy fishing or you’ll always be in a rut.

“T” Bubba

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Bass Fishing, Fishing, Lures, Swimbaits, Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.