(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
The old adage that “if you want to catch big fish, use a big bait,” is true more often than it’s not.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s 100-percent accurate. Davy Hite, one of the handful of anglers to win both the Bassmaster Classic and the Forrest Wood Cup, said that “you can catch 10-inch bass with a 12-inch worm and you can catch an 8-pound bass on a 4-inch worm,” but you put the odds in your favor if you go big early. It’s definitely possible to focus on bigger-than-average fish with big baits.
“A 10-pound bass is like trying to target a big deer,” he explained. They have different habits than their smaller counterparts and it takes a trophy hunting mentality if you want to catch them consistently. Of course, that’s not always a feasible approach in a tournament situation where five average-sized fish will beat one big one, but it’s a good guideline not only for trophy hunters, but also for those who want to win big-weight tournaments consistently.
Hite calls trophy bass “cold-blooded, opportunistic predators,” and the following are some of his tried-and-true lures for tempting them.
The first is the Mop Jig. If he had to pick one, it would be a 1/2-ounce model, but the key is not always the weight as much as the skirt. He likes a 6-inch version made of living rubber, which comes in fewer colors than silicon, but has much more action, “even when it’s sitting still,” and that’s often when big, wary bass scoop it up. Another lure that he likes when bass are out on deep structure is a super-deep-diving crankbait, like the largest of the Storm Arashi series, which on a long cast will go 23 or 24 feet deep. He said that he lands a higher percentage of fish on single-hooked lures like the jig, but sometimes nothing gets them to react like a hard-charging crankbait.
There may be no more exciting way to catch big fish than on a topwater. Hite said the combination is “like cake and icing,” and he uses both the largest Arashi walking bait and a variety of big frogs frequently, but noted that you have to have a heart of steel to see this pattern through. When he won the FLW Championship, he caught the majority of his fish on a hollow-bodied frog, and he won by a margin of 12 ounces, but did it with a pit in his stomach as he knew that any missed strike would mean the difference between the $250,000 top prize and the $25,000 second prize.
Of course, in recent years he’s also added a variety of swimbaits to his trophy-hunting arsenal. Various hollow-bodied versions, like the one he used to claim an Elite Series title at Pickwick, as well as ribbed versions like the Yamamoto Heart Tail, can be fished weedless in 2 feet of weedy water or 30 feet down on structure. He tailors his choice of style and color to the baitfish that he’s trying to mimic, whether that be threadfin shad, gizzard shad or bream. He’s experimented with the newest jointed glide baits, which he refers to as “ooh ooh ooh baits” because often the fishing report is that “I saw four big ones.” Even if they just produce followers or half-hearted slashing strikes, though, they’re still useful because they help him locate beds and concentrations of fish.
One bait that’s often thought of as a “limit-getter,” but is actually one of Hite’s favorite trophy lures, is the Senko … but he’s not using the standard 5-incher, he prefers the 7-inch monster. He learned about it at Champlain, or all places, where a co-angler put a hurting on him with it, and ever since then it’s been a staple all over the country. While he fishes it wacky-style and Texas-rigged, he said many of the biggest bites come on a VMC Drop Dead Hook (either 3/32- or 1/8-ounce), which forces it to glide instead of fall vertically with a quiver. It’s those little differences that put bigger fish in the boat, and his seminar has lots of little tweaks that’ll lead you into the trophy hunters’ club.
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