Fall 2024
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SAND LURES
One of my favorite ways to fish a sand flat on a lake is with a swim jig. A swim jig does a great job imitating the baitfish that the bass are pushing up on the sand. Slow rolling your swim jig along the bottom resembles the crawfish the bass are eating.
I will typically fish a 1/4-ounce All-Terrain Tackle Finesse Swim Jig with a small swimbait trailer, like a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper, or Northland Fishing Tackle Eye- Candy Paddle Shad.
I like making long casts over the sand flat and reeling it in. Every so often I give it a twitch with my rod tip. This little erratic action mimics a fleeing baitfish and will generate a reaction strike out of a pursuing bass.
If the bass are holding tighter to the bottom, or if the water I’m fishing is deeper than eight-feet, I’ll bump my jig up to a 3/8-ounce size, and switch up to a double tail grub, or small craw, as my trailer to mimic the crawfish scurrying along the bottom.
TYING UP
Typically, when I’m fishing a swim jig, it is around or through vegetation, so I’ll use braided line. But when I’m fishing sand, it is open water, and likely cleaner water, so I’ll switch my swim jig set up to 15-pound Seaguar TATSU
Fluorocarbon, or their JDM R18
Mainline Fluorocarbon in 14- or
16-pound-test. Both lines are
Double Structured Fluorocarbon
(DSF), so they are very smooth
casting, while offering exceptional
knot and tensile strength.
Casting around a wacky-rigged
soft plastic stick bait is a great way
to target bass holding on the inside
edge of a weed line that has sand
patches, or a consistent sand flat
between the weed line and shore.
You can make pinpoint casts to
the sand patches or cast it parallel
with the weed/sand edge and let
the bait sit there. In either case, as
bass move along that sand, they’ll
find your wacky rig and just slowly
move off with it.
Depending on the lure profile
that the bass want, the targeted
water depth and how far of a
cast I’m making, I’ll either rig a Yamamoto Senko, X-Zone Lures True Center Stick, Zoom Fluke Stick, Fluke Stick Jr, or Zlinky, as the bigger baits allow me to cast farther and present a quicker fall in the water. The smaller-sized baits offer a more finesse profile to tight- lipped bass.
If I need to get my soft plastic stick bait down to the bottom quicker, or if it is windy, I will either add a nail weight into the end of the worm, or use a weighted hook, like the Northland Fishing Tackle Elite Series Weedless Wacky Head.
I like to rig my soft plastic stick baits on a Lazer TroKar Pro V Bend Finesse Hook (TK137 size 2) as the gap of the
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