Oregon bass vs. everywhere else bass

[Green Punkin]

Has anyone else noticed this conundrum? The tactics, presentations and advice from almost every outside source seem inherently flawed when you apply them to our bass. Of course I don't have the gear and location that In-Fisherman or other sources seem to assume that every fisherman has ($10k bass boat, many tackle boxes brimming with every lure and bait imaginable, lakefront property on Lake Okeechobee etc. etc.) but bass here seem to like one thing and one thing only: soft plastic. In my case, specifically the pumpkin green, 4 inch long senko or zoom tail variety. For example, I personally, or any of my friends have ever had any luck on any sort of crankbait (excluding the ever potent original Rapala). Willow blade spinners seem to be similarly ineffective, as do chatter baits, swim baits, poppers and on almost every occasion, topwater frogs. I just picked up some jig-n-pig combos, so hopefully those will produce. But as for the aforementioned lures, they just don't seem to give half a rotting bluegill carcass. It may be my imagination, and I'm sure everyone else has the maddening spring bass fever that I'm currently attempting to cope with but there is no way that nobody else has noticed this. Alas, this pains me that this pattern exists, because as my maddening desire for bucketmouth grows with each passing season, so does my desire to capture them with new and exciting means. And then there are just those days where a good ol' senko just can't touch a thing no matter carefully placed or lovingly twitched through a seedy part of Pondville. Does anyone have any luck with anything beyond my basic poor man's ways? What am I missing here? Are my cranks the wrong color? What conditions are there for other presentations? Help! I'm going completely mad! I find myself waking up to my hands trying to texas rig a worm that isn't there!

 

[Throbbit _Shane]

What ever you feel confident in and comfortable using is the best thing to throw. Most of my bass come on senko's as im still really green behind the ears when it comes to bass. But I do still nail them on swimbaits, spinnerbaits, top water and crankbaits occasionally. Top water is such a blast to watch them nail it, And swim bait and spinner bait fishing almost reminds me of fishing spoons for steelhead they really hammer the **** out of them at times.

This post is getting me jazzed up for the Umpqua. Any thing you throw at them they'll bite lol. But top water is the best there!

 

[Green Punkin]

Topwater fascinates me the most. I've had one good day with a frog and it was magic. can't seem to do it again

 

[Berg03]

In my experience, I tend to only catch bass on topwater in ponds. Not so much in lakes. But your gonna catch the most fish in what you are comfortable and confident with. Honestly try and find a private pond to fish and learn new tactics, will help you get confident in new techniques. thats how I learned how to use a swim bait, now i can go out in a lake and find some bass with large swim baits.
But in the end a lot of my fish do come on Senkos, mainly because I love the way the bite feels. Tap, tap, rod tip down wait for your line to peel out and whaaam!

 

[Green Punkin]

senko bites are great to be sure! im just a trout fisherman pining for the surface take or tight line smack that a spinner provides

 

[Bassgrabber]

I think a bass is a bass. It doesn't know where it lives, only relates to his/her conditions regarding cover and forage. When I lived in that neck of the woods I caught them on plastics, blades, and hardbaits. Now living in Spokane I catch them on the same stuff. My 1st few years I swore a hard jerkbait was the only thing that would catch a smallmouth. Every time I threw one I caught fish, just varied the retrieve and cadence. I believe there is a time and place for everything, just have to put it together, and even more so put in the same amount of time with that bait/lure that isn't your bread and butter confidence go to fish catcher.

 

[Green Punkin]

i think the main issue is that we lack the shiners, shad, etc. in these parts so half of the hardware and swimbaits out there imitate something our bass have never seen

 

[bass]

My experience is the exact opposite of yours GP. The following applies to the Willamette. Crankbaits are probably my most productive lure, I especially like the hot lips express. A crayfish color is my favorite but I also throw minnow colors. A white skirt, gold bladed willow leaf spinnerbait was by far my best producing spinnerbait until I broke it off on a big fish last year. The early morning topwater bite on the Willamette is usually pretty awesome all summer long. I tend to throw a tiny torpedo. For soft plastic, I tend to use a drop shot or a shaky head jig with a brownish colored lure.

In the Willamette there are shiners, peamouth, pikieminnows, shad fry, smolts, etc to feed on so using minnow colors is a pretty natural presentation. I tend to use crayfish colored crankbaits most of the time because I have had a lot of success with that coloration since I was a kid. Plus I am banging it off the bottom where the crayfish are. The lures I use here are the same ones I caught tons of bass on in PA and NC.

I agree with bassgrabber, a bass is a bass.

 

[Shaun Solomon]

i think the main issue is that we lack the shiners, shad, etc. in these parts so half of the hardware and swimbaits out there imitate something our bass have never seen

I think the main issue here is that you have mentally painted yourself into a corner.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Assume you have a bunch of bass in a big aquarium. You also happen to have in your hand a goldfish, something the bass in your aquarium have never seen before. I think you can see where this is going...

I worked in the fishing tackle retail business for years, and would have conversations like this all the time:

Customer... "The only thing I catch fish on is "X""
Me... "What else do you use? "
Customer " Well, nothing. Nothing else works!"

Do yourself a favor and quit using green pumpkin Senkos. Don't even take them. You can do it.

Good luck.

 

[wils]

are you bank fishing or boat fishing?
my bass boat is a $1500 gregor. those expensive boats can get "hurt" where I take my gregor.

 

[Green Punkin]

Alas, im a banker. I have a float tube but she doesn't see much daylight any more. thanks for putting this into perspective for me guys. I'll see if i can't break free from my soft plastic shackles :thumb:

 

[Stonefish]

I do all of my bass fishing out of a super fat cat float tube and with a fly rod.
The topwater game is great. Fishing lakes early and late seem to be the key for me.
If I fish topwater mid day, I concentrate on the shadow side of structure.

I also enjoy fish worm, leech and baitfish patterns. Bass are pretty opportunistic so I've never considered not having shiners, shad, etc to be an issue.
There are plenty of other things (perch, stocker trout, sunfish, blue gills, crawdads etc) for them to chow down on.
SF

 

[bubs]

Interesting post Green Punkin...sounds like you've tried a lot of different approaches, so I doubt it's just that you haven't expanded beyond plastics like some other posters are suggesting. I've actually noticed a really similar pattern fishing from the bank at some of the reservoirs and smallish lakes in NW Oregon. But, same pattern often doesn't exist when fishing ponds or rivers....so I would bet it's a combo of fishing in a certain place, and fishing from the bank, that produces the pattern.

Also, a bass is a bass to some degree....BUT a bass hovering over its nest in spring acts much differently than a bass cruising alone along a river bank, which all act differently than bass schooling around bait fish etc...For example, I've found that at a certain lake when bass start schooling around big bait fish pods they won't even look at the same Senko they devoured the day before when they were just cruising alone in the same spot.

 

[Green Punkin]

you guys were right again. took a jig out for a spin today and murdered them. didn't even want to pick up a senko! Ill post pics

 

[Green Punkin]

Blam! this is about a 5th of what i caught. i've got more if anyone wants them:thumb:

 

[Shaun Solomon]

Good stuff!

 

[GungasUncle]

My bass success is probably 40% crankbaits, 40% soft plastics, 15% flies, and 5% "other" baits. A big reasoning for this - throwing crankbaits is my favorite way to fish for bass, followed by throwing soft plastics like senkos, tubes, and texas rigs. Some seasons I fish the bug wand a lot more - and honestly when they're biting, getting them on the fly rod beats all the other stuff. But the gear rods allow for faster action and I typically burn up the water faster and fish more water. The fly rod in hand, I slow down, I make multiple casts to the same spots, and generally work less water. Not sure why I do this.

Cranks are my favorite "locating" bait - if the fish are there, and they're in the mood to eat, they'll at least strike at a crank. If they don't seem to be committing to the hard bait, I switch up to the soft plastics and slow the retrieves down.

This season, if I get out for them (still don't have my boat done!), I'm going to be fishing swim baits more, as this is a lure I want to get more practice and confidence in. I've got a couple "small" 4-6 inch hard swim baits to try out.

Confidence in a bait = more success. When we find a lure that we have success in, and enjoy fishing, it's natural to gravitate to that lure for the bulk of your fishing. When I was just breaking into serious bass fishing, I had a hard time catching fish on soft plastics - despite devouring every book and magazine article (this was before the internet had a bajillion fishing sites) telling me how effective they were, I had a hard time getting them. I'd catch bass on spoons, in-line spinners, and live worms. All stuff I had caught lots of trout on before, and had confidence in.

I'll say this much - the bass in Hagg (the water I usually fish) - seem to have this uncanny ability to have lock jaw without dashing away and hiding, and sometimes won't hit anything you throw at them. If they don't eat it the first time, they probably won't. But that doesn't stop me from getting fixated on one or a group of fish and throwing lures at them over and over for half an hour before moving in frustration.

 

[Green Punkin]

This seems to be the problem i've backed myself into. I'm not sure how soon ill be picking up a fly rod to go after ol' lunkzilla but I have expanded since you guys pointed this out. My jigs for example. super happy with those and it certainly picked up as soon as I put a day into fishing just those. Does anyone have recommendations for crankbait patterns, sizes, styles etc? I like having the fight begin as soon as the fish picks up. Having immediate fight on an already tight line is an awesome feeling, and even with a few years of experience fishing a lot of soft plastics on more slack lines, i feel like i don't even detect a lot of fish. Any thoughts?

 

[Green Punkin]

Also I should point out, I'm generally speaking about largemouth. I feel like that will probably influnece the cranks i should use. I've been productive for smallies with a variety of things, I was just getting sick of using the same thing day in and day out for largemouth. I know guys that have fished for the last 30 years with nothing but worms and hey it works for them, but it'd make me want to glue my hands together and bounce my forehead off a concrete wall if i had to be that predictable :lol:

 

[GraphiteZen]

Good job changing things up! Yesterday, I went out to Olalla to try and drag up some post spawn females and guarding males. Fished for suspended fish off drops, fished deep flats, around timber in shady coves, and all around points with jigs, plastic, crankbaits, and spinnerbaits with all kinds of retrieve. Nothing for hours. Then did what I should have done in the first place (duh) and tied on a sinking, rattling, lipless crankbait in green/chartreuse/orange. Immediately started catching bass, trout, and yellow perch letting it sink with about 3' rips every 4 or 5 seconds. Absolutely murdered them throughout the last 5 hours of the day. Ended the day with about 20 fish total. Sometimes you just gotta grind it to find what works, especially when you suck like me.

I should add that my #1 go to is the bass jig with a trailer.