Avoid This Common Swimbait Fishing Mistake

[Music] there's no technique out there that takes more commitment than the big swim bait i may only get five bites all day so i need to make them count got them good one really good one you know fishing a big swim bait is different than any other lure category you're gonna fish you have to sort of shift your mentality to not expect to get a lot of bites this is about quality it's not about quantity there we go number five [Music] randy started his day on the main lake point on the lower end of the lake we were facing the worst possible conditions for fishing a big swimbait there was no wind no clouds and sunny skies this usually makes the fish very inactive and they're more likely to follow the swim bait back to the boat especially in clear water than actually eat it the water in the area where randy started had five to eight feet of water visibility and with no wind or clouds the fish would not commit to the big swim bait after fishing several more main lake points and pockets in the clear water section of the lake randy decided to make a long run to the james river where the water had a lot less water clarity in this area of the lake the water had one to three feet of visibility usually when you have bright bluebird skies no wind the fish in the dirtier water are a little bit more aggressive and they'll eat your bait even if you don't have any wind or clouds the problem with a swim bait is it's a visual bait and in that dirtier water randy said that a lot of the fish would swipe at the bait and hit it but they wouldn't connect randy fished in the dirty water for a few more hours but didn't manage to catch a single fish after five hours of fishing he had a lot of fish follow his bait or bump his bait but none of them committed to the big swim bait fortunately about five hours into the day the weather completely changed a front started moving through the area creating cloud cover and also generating a little bit of wind maybe five miles an hour this was just enough changing conditions to make randy confident that he could go back to the clear water and start fishing the same main lake points that he was targeting earlier this decision paid off and he put his first keeper in the boat there he is finally hit right right at the boat you know i have that trailer hook in him there we go finally after a long day i got the mag draft right there i thought that he had the uh trailer hook on there but actually hit it on the outside see he's just swiping at the thing nice small mouth get a weight on him so we got two pounds and nine ounces here for that small mouth i'll get him back in the water here okay that that is like the eighth fish that i've had today that have been it's just like that one i should have had like you know eight fish like that or bigger and that fish was actually hooked on the outside of the mouth swiped at it like all the other ones have been doing but got a little bit of a hook in him and that's what they're doing today it's just like we don't have the wind you know it's it's good conditions as far as the clouds i mean as we got partly cloudy to cloudy skies but we just don't have the wind and in this clear water here you know we've got eight for the visibility if you don't have that wind these fish just study this thing and look at it so that one right there you know barely hooked uh maybe later in the day like this we've got a little bit of a breeze maybe it'll start getting on but at least we're on the board finally i started my day with a different approach because there was no wind no cloud cover and bluebird skies i felt like my best chance to get a bite on that big swim bait was finding a group of fish offshore i started on a main lake point in 20 to 30 feet of water my goal was to find some post-spawn spotted baths and smallmouth that might eat that big swim bait i quickly found some offshore schools of fish in 20 to 30 feet of water chasing bait fish i used my garmin livescope to follow these schools of fish around the points as they chased the shad i threw a six inch megabass magdraft freestyle swimbait on a one ounce jig head i was able to get several fish to hit the swimbait but none of them would commit i then switched over to a swim bait that had a big treble hook that i used as a trailer hook on the back of the swimbait this allowed me to hook up with two really big spotted bass but they both jumped off those fish just had too much leverage with the one ounce jig head on that big swimbait and i could never get him into the boat i ran several more main lake points and found schools of fish chasing shad but i could never get any of those fish in the boat they would hit it like crazy and if i was throwing a smaller swimbait or maybe a hair jig i guarantee you i could have put a limit in the boat very quickly but because we had to throw that big swim bait i was out of luck after a few hours i realized i had a very small chance of landing the spotted bath and smallmouth offshore on the big swim bait therefore i moved some dirty water to look for some offshore largemouth in general you'll find that largemouth are going to school up offshore more often when you have two to three feet of water visibility therefore i spent about an hour graphing in that two to three feet of water visibility however table rock lake was a few feet high on this fishing day i feel like this kept a lot of fish up in the shallow bushes and they hadn't quite moved offshore yet this meant i didn't find any groups of big largemouth offshore i'm now 5 hours into my fishing day and in the exact same position as randy neither of us had a single keeper in the boat at this point in the day fortunately that front started to move through in my area of the lake as well as soon as i saw the cloud cover roll in i abandoned the offshore areas i was fishing and headed shallow my first instinct was to run some main lake channel swing banks that had a lot of waves crashing into them due to all the boat traffic on the lower end of the lake this in addition to the cloud cover created ideal conditions for a big swim bait got them good one really good one oh my gosh stay on there fish oh there we go just hit the right conditions to get these fish going that's what i'm talking about on the mag draft right there solid largemouth let me get off the bank here we got an hour and a half to put it all together we got our first fish in the boat i think we can do it there we go three pounds two ounces solid three pounder i need five more of those really fast and we're gonna have a good bag let's get this guy back down the lake get after it man on this steep rocky bank the boat traffic kicked up cloud cover rolled in i was finally able to start throwing this bait a little bit shallower lost a couple of good fish offshore already today that's keeper number one we have an hour and a half to take advantage of these conditions and put a few more fish in the boat back on the other side of the lake randy was taking advantage of the cloud cover and started moving into the back of some shallower pockets he had fished several areas like this earlier in the day and had fish follow his swim bait but not commit however with the cloud cover he was finally able to get these fish to actually eat his magdraf swim bait and it was game on oh there he is oh it's a good one oh man big one oh man a big small mouth that there was a big largemouth that was right behind it just a second before that oh yeah here we go man look at that one guys that right before that the cast right before that about a four or five pounder was just like that far away from the back of it and this one came up and got it got the got the main hook six inch mag draft well he ate it good you can see on that that was crazy there three pounds and five ounces almost a three and a half pound small mouth here and normally you don't catch small mouth out of these bushes we're in three foot of water here and nice big smallmouth so at their back really the only thing different we've had one thing i found out about these big swim baits is a lot of people think they bite better unlike early in the morning or they should bite better early and late but i find out that like the middle of the day that's when those bigger ones get aggressive on it they'll actually eat the thing like i said i had i had six or seven fish in that class hit the bait this morning just not get it and you know now they're starting to eat it no wind back here but that's two big ones here man that was a four or five pound largemouth right before i caught that one there that got it really quick i wanna let you know about the upcoming seminar we're offering on our website fishthemoment.com just head to the virtual seminars page here you'll find an upcoming seminar about suspended bass fishing offshore in the seminar i'm going to be giving up all of my closely guarded secrets on how to target bastards suspended offshore these fish are notoriously tough to catch but after the seminar you're gonna be able to locate these fish trigger them to bite and put them in the boat this will give you a huge advantage over all the other anglers they're fishing offshore around you in the seminar i'm covering the best baits casting angles retrieves and also how to use your 2d sonar down imaging as well as garmin livescope to put these fish in the boat consistently year round in addition we recently added recordings of past seminars that were highly requested the most popular is our advanced electronics seminar if you've missed this in the past definitely pick up a recording on fishthemoment.com at the same time i was getting dialed in on the main lake channel swing banks on the other side of the lake i ran two different banks and lost two really good fish even though the conditions were perfect this big swim bait doesn't have the best landing ratio and so i wasn't able to capitalize on every single bite fortunately i ran a new bank and got another bite very quickly got him big one [Applause] stay on their fish oh there we go another one oh my gosh guys it is going down right now another solid fish right there changing up colors in the mag draft because i'm missing them on that white one so i went to more of a natural color seems to be getting a few better uh connections so let's get on the scales real quick there we go three pounds one ounces another three pounder right there solid fish getting back down there three in the boat we need to get two more we have an hour left we can do this guys let's get after it those two lost fish really hurt me though because randy was pouring it on on the other end of the lake he was getting a lot of bites fishing shallow flooded bushes in the backs of some coves and pockets while we were both getting quality bites randy was getting a lot more bites in the backs to shallow pockets than i was on the main lake channel swing banks because the lake was flooded and we had a little bit of a delayed spring due to some colder temperatures we feel like a lot of the fish were still back in the spawning coves and this allowed randy to get a lot more consistent bites in every single pocket he ran on the other side of the lake i was fishing on the main lake and i was really fishing for the first wave of fish that moved out of the pockets out to the main lake this meant that randy probably had two to three times as many fish in his areas than i did this meant that i needed to capitalize on every single bite if i was going to catch up but randy was getting so many bites that even if you lost one it didn't really matter oh man there he's got it came back and got it they were doing this this morning but they weren't eating it big small mouth wow man that that was awesome right there there we go nice small mouth wow he ate it good magda well he was that that fish was schooling out of 30 foot of water over there and i lost one this morning on the same spot and cloud a little bit of cloud just got a little bit of wind ate it man let's see what this one see what this one weighs three pounds and nine ounces man that was fun he hit it he actually hit it twice and came back and got it the other time but nice beautiful smallmouth there's another one that last fish from randy was a nail in the coffin he was initially fishing down the shore on a main lake point but saw some fish busting on shad on the surface behind the boat and cast over there those fish were schooling over 30 feet of water on a point that was very similar to the points i started my day on however earlier in the day those fish were not actually showing the sauce on the surface instead they were schooling 10 to 15 feet under the surface and you had to use technology like garmin livescope to see those fish the fish weren't committing to my big swim bait earlier in the day but when the cloud cover and a little bit of wind came through those fish raised up higher in the water column started schooling and started committing to that big swim bait this day was a real eye-opener for both of us because neither of us had fish in the boat after the first five hours of the day then that front moved through and the fish started feeding both offshore and shallow my decision to abandon the offshore fish may have been the deciding factor on this fishing day randy ended up with five fish for over 16 pounds and i only managed to catch three fish for a little over eight pounds randy spent his entire day fishing up shallow this gave him a better understanding of how the fish were positioned in the shallower water therefore when the front started to move through and the fish got active he knew exactly which banks to run and where the majority of fish were to get as many bites as possible in a very short window on the other hand i spent the majority of my day fishing offshore i did locate several schools of fish but i eventually lost confidence in those fish and abandoned them too soon i did go up shallow and catch a few fish but i didn't have enough understanding of where those fish were positioning to catch the numbers i needed in a short window of time if i had stayed offshore and tried to capitalize on the fish i'd already found i probably would have had a lot more success and probably ended up with a limit these are decisions that can make or break your fishing day and it's what we love to show you guys on this channel and that's it for this video guys we didn't get an outro because the rain started pouring down on us but hopefully you enjoyed the video if you want more content from fish the moment definitely subscribe down below leave a like on the video and also hit the bell to get notified of all of our future challenge videos thanks again for checking out the video and we'll see on the next one

Channel: Fish the Moment

Views: 28,687

Rating: 4.9344826 out of 5

Keywords: Bass fishing, bass fishing tips, Fish the Moment, Jonny Schultz, bass fishing productions, bass fishing for beginners, bass fishing videos, where to bass fish, where to find bass, where to catch bass, swimbait fishing, swimbait bass fishing, swimbait bass fishing tips, swimbait bass fishing videos, magdraft swimbait, magdraft swimbait fishing, big swimbait bass fishing, big swimbait fishing, big swimbaits for bass, spring swimbait fishing, springtime swimbaits

Id: Qlp6QKLMvE0

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021