Finding Bass With Plastic Grub

When Yamaha angler Gary Yamamoto looks for bass while practicing for a tournament, he seldom fishes the way other anglers do.  Instead of using a hard plastic crankbait or a fast and flashy spinnerbait, he prefers an ordinary plastic grub. 

“Many soft plastic lures, particularly those with a swimming tail design, appeal to bass through both their appearance and their actions,” he explains.  “This is one of the major advantages soft plastic lures have over many hard baits.  They look very natural in the water, and with good tail actions, plastic lures become much more versatile, especially since you can rig them weedless and fish them in places you can never use a hard bait.” 

 One of Yamamoto’s favorite plastic fish-finders is a grub ranging from four to eight inches in length, because, depending on how he rigs it, he can fish the same lure from the surface to the bottom.  

“On the surface, either weightless or rigged with a light screw-in sinker, a fast retrieve turns a shorter grub into a tail-churning buzz bait,” the veteran FLW and BASS pro points out, “and you can work it right through brush and weeds.  If I slow my retrieve and let the grub sink slightly, I can fish it like a crankbait or a jerkbait, using an erratic stop-and-go retrieve.”  

That’s not all.  The Yamaha pro frequently rigs his grubs with a heavier 1/2-ounce sinker and pitches them into weeds just like they’re jigs; at other times he uses a football-style jighead and drops them deeper around steep rocks and ledges. 

 “Grubs are made in several different designs,” Yamamoto continues, “so knowing which style to use can be important.  I prefer to use grubs with a single swimming tail on lakes where the bass are known to be feeding on baitfish, but when I know the bass are feeding on crawfish, I’ll use a grub with a double tail so I can crawl and bounce it along the bottom to immitate that forage.” 

 Double tail grubs (also known as twin tails) can also be effectively used to find bass on deeper lakes that have little or no vegetation.  In these types of waters, Yamamoto rigs a double tail grub with a heavy one-ounce football head and casts to steeper bluff-type shorelines, then works the lure back with a steady rise-and-fall action. 

 “You can take advantage of a single tail grub’s swimming action to locate bass in standing timber and flooded brush in shallow water, too” he adds, “because they swim to the bottom on your initial presentation and swim up whenever you raise your rod.  

“When you rig a grub weedless and with a screw-in sinker, you can cast right into the cover, or you can cast beyond the cover and slowly swim the grub into it, or beside the cover and frequently pull bass out of that cover to strike.” 

 The Yamaha pro is a master at this particular technique.  His preferred presentation is to swim a large six or eight-inch single tail grub by raising his rod tip and reeling slowly to pull the lure forward and beside the cover, then lowering his rod to let the grub swim back down. 

 “We all realize bass move tighter to cover and become more and more reluctant to leave as fishing pressure increases,” the Yamaha pro concludes, “but if you can’t even get a lure to the fish, there isn’t any way you can catch it.  

“With a weedless plastic grub, you can cast directly into the cover with a lure that looks completely natural.  And besides, the bass probably haven’t seen many lures like that, either, because everyone else is using spinnerbaits or hard crankbaits.”By: Martin Peters, Mgr Communications