It’s extremely important to have strong bass fishing line and knots to ensure your next personal bass doesn’t escape.
When it comes to fishing new water and trying to develop a pattern, it’s always good to start with confidence baits. For many bass anglers, that confidence bait is a jig. You can swim the bait back to the boat, you can hop it around cover. There’s a lot of different ways you can fish a weedless bass jig, which is the main reason it’s such a deadly weapon all season long.
Start with your standard, go-to size, color and style, then experiment throughout the day with different variations until the fish tell you what they want to eat. Bass jigs come in several specialize styles for a number of situations – whether you’re fishing around cover, dragging across the bottom in deep water, casting and winding, etc.
Jigs not only come in a wide variety of styles, but you can further adjust your presentations by swapping out plastic “trailers”. It’s extremely common to use craw-style plastics like the Big Bite Swimmin’ Craw, but don’t sleep on paddle tail swimbaits, especially if you’re swimming the bait back to the boat.
One of Jeremy Smith’s favorite bass fishing line choices for this presentation is 40lb Sufix 832 braid. When you’re fishing no-stretch, braided superlines like this, it pays to tie some type of Polymer or overhand knot. These are bullet proof knots will withstand just about anything and have a lot of bulk, as well.
Another excellent all around presentation for bass fishing is a simple Texas-rigged plastic. You can fish it in and around heavy cover, deep or shallow.
Common plastic options for Texas-rigging include big worms, stickbaits, creature baits, swimbaits, crawfish – you name it! Just about every plastic on the market that’s longer than a few inches can be deployed on a standard Texas-rig setup.
Jeremy’s a big fan of the 5/0 VMC Extra-Wide Gap Hook for rigging up plastics. It has a 3-degree offset point that catches the fish’s mouth a little easier as it slides through, which is a big deal to up your hooking percentage. It’s also specially designed to be tied up with a snell knot, which is a great option anytime you’re fishing Texas-rigged worms or craws.
Snell knots provide extra leverage on the hook that helps with hooking and landing fish. It also adds a little more friction on the hook shank to hold the plastic in place.
