Have you tried a fishing a buzzbait? John from Mongo Fishing, our resident buzzbait fanatic, is here with some awesome tips to help you catch more fish on the buzzbait! Fall is a great time to go after explosive topwater bites with lures like the buzzbait. Use these tips and get way more action out of your buzzbait game.

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Video transcript:

John Carroll:
Hey, what's up guys, John, from Mongo Fishing. Today, I'm here on the MONSTERBASS channel to talk to you guys about one of my absolute favorite techniques and one that's made me a little bit of money, Buzzbaits. So let's get into it.

John Carroll:
All right guys, so like I said, my name is John from Mongo Fishing, and this is the MONSTERBASS channel. If you are new to the MONSTERBASS channel or new to bass fishing and you want to learn tips and techniques and procedures and how to become a better bass fisherman, make sure you hit the subscribe button right down there, along with the bell notification button so you get notified every single time MONSTERBASS puts out another video. My channel, Mongo Fishing, there'll be a link down in the description below. My channel's primarily tournament footage, but it's honest tournament footage. So regardless if I do well, or if I suck, I still put the video out. I want people to see the real aspect of tournament bass fishing and not just putting out a video when a person does well. There is success and failure on my channel. If that's not for you. Cool. I totally get it. If it is, I'd dig it if you came over and checked me out.

John Carroll:
But let's get into this, because these are absolutely one of my absolute favorite things to throw, and I'm actually going to do the day after this video goes live on MONSTERBASS I will be releasing a kind of a little more thorough video on Buzzbaits on my channel also. But let's get into these. So Buzzbaits. All right. So they're super simple. There's really not much to them. It's a piece of wire, a blade, either plastic or metal, a lead head of some sort, and a hook. It may or may not have a skirt. It totally depends on the model of Buzzbait you have. Now there's lots of different styles. There's this style that just has a regular blade. You've got clackers where the water resistance is pushing up against this little guy as it spins and it's clacking. I'm sure you can hear that. You've got head knockers, which is also a clacker style bait, but the blade is actually hitting the head. It'll knock the paint off after a while. Way louder.

John Carroll:
And then there's just a few other styles that I throw that are kind of the same clacking concept, but a different design. But they still do the same thing. They're still making lots of noise and being loud and rambunctious. Okay. So skirted and unskirted, as you saw. I started off with the first one in my hand is skirted. It's probably how most Buzzbaits that you find are skirted Buzzbaits. It adds a little bit of flow in the water if you will. Versus an unskirted one that you just want to put a trailer on. All right so the very first thing that you want to do on any Buzzbait, any Buzzbait at all, the very first thing you want to do, if it has a metal blade you want to grab yourself a pair of pliers, come down here to this crimp right there, and crimp that thing in place. You don't want this little piece right here, turning and spinning and moving. You want it crimped in place so it stays steady.

John Carroll:
Now the reason for that is you want this blade to build friction on that same exact spot and rub the same exact spots every rotation. And eventually it'll start developing a squeak. Buzzbaits get better with age. The more you use them the squeakier and noisier they get. And it just kind of sounds like a, I don't know, a dinner bell to bass and calls them up. So a brand new Buzzbait fresh out of the package probably doesn't have any squeak to it. You crimp that little thing down right there, there's a few other things you can do to it to help increase the speed of getting the squeak, but crimp that down. And the more you throw it, the more rotations you get, the squeakier this thing will get, and you'll start to hear it after a while.

John Carroll:
All right now trailers. I almost always have a trailer on my Buzzbaits. It doesn't matter if I'm throwing a quarter ounce, a half ounce, eighth ounce, three eighths doesn't really matter. I almost always have a trailer. And the reason for that is your trailer does multiple things. One, it adds more bulk, it makes your bait larger. It gives it a bigger profile. We'll take the same exact Buzzbait right here, no trailer. Trailer. It's just a bigger bulkier bait, makes it larger in the water. Gives it more profile. Gives it more kick, more thump, more everything. And a couple other advantages is, one, it makes the bait easier to skip. If you're trying to skip it underneath docks or underneath an overhang or something like that, you have a nice wide base for this thing to skip under a little easier versus this might just plow right in the water. So nice fat flat base for it to skip.

John Carroll:
It also allows a fish when he comes up and eats this, since this is just lead and steel and a little bit of skirting that doesn't feel like food, but this soft plastic right here does feel like food. So he bites onto that and he actually is going to hold it on in his mouth just a little bit longer. You give yourself just a little better of a chance of getting a good hook set. So that's another reason why you almost always run a trailer.

John Carroll:
Here's one guys. Oh, it's a nice one. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. That's a good one right there guys. He goes on the big side, and now I got to find out which little guy to get rid of.

John Carroll:
So speaking of trailers, I like to run cross style trailers, some sort of little cross style trailer like that, or a toad style trailer, or sometimes I'll even run a little swimbait. Now swimbaits primarily I use these, I have one rigged up right now on little eighth ounce Buzzbait. Right now there's lots of small bait out in the water. So if I'm using a small Buzzbait with a small swimbait for the trailer, this thing flat out gets annihilated and these bass get a chance to really, really choke it down and get it good because it's just such a small profile. Plus I can still skip it really easy, because it's a lightweight Buzzbait and I still have that piece of plastic for it to skip underneath docks. It's more buoyant, makes it just a little bit easier to work.

John Carroll:
Now, if you use a trailer that has a bunch of salt in it that can actually kind of be counterproductive because the salt wants to sink. So you kind of have to find the right trailer. I really like to use Rage Menace grubs, but I don't like to use the Rage Menace like the Magnum Menace. That just seems, I don't know, too heavy for its size. And it just kind of pulls the Buzzbait underwater a little easier. So you just got to play around with that, find the right trailer for you with what you like to use. Like I said, frogs and toads are really, really good typically or small swimbaits. Those are probably my three primary trailers that I use. All right, where to fish it? Alongside docks or skipping underneath docks, rip rap, sea walls, exposed vegetation, submerged vegetation, wood. Wood is a really, really good thing. If you can bump a Buzzbait off of a stick, off of a lay down, or bring it over top of a log or something like that, really good chance you're going to get blown up.

John Carroll:
Buzzbaits for the most part are relatively weedless. They want to swim like this and come across. And so again, with that trailer, it helps keep it keeled. It'll come over top of the log a lot of times. Sometimes it will roll and get stuck. It is what it is, but a lot of times it'll come right over top and you can just keep bringing it right on past or whatever. Again, bump it off of docks and bump it off of whatever cover you're fishing next to. That's typically when you'll get the strike is if you can deflect it off of stuff. So trailer hooks, that's going to be situationally dependent. If I'm fishing in a bunch of really, really snaggy stuff I'm not going to have a trailer hook. If the bass are flat out choking that thing, I'm not going to have a trailer hook.

John Carroll:
If they're tail grabbing, if they're not really wanting to commit, or if I'm kind of wide open water, then yeah, maybe I will run a trailer hook. Maybe I won't. It's really situationally dependent and how I feel that day. But a trailer hook can interfere with how the trailer is acting. So you need to keep that in mind also. Sometimes the juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

John Carroll:
All right, guys, at some point when you're fishing with one of these things, you're going to catch a big fish and it's going to just mangle this bait. It's going to bend it all out of whack and you're going to go to throw it and it's not going to work right. Either the blade's hitting something or it's helicoptering back or it's tracking off to the side or whatever. All you have to do in that situation is get your bait and line everything back up again. Okay. You want to look straight down, make sure everything is lined up. Make sure things are lined up this way also. And that's all you have to do. It happens to every Buzzbait on the market. A big fish will mess one of these things up and just bend it out of whack. It takes you just a few minutes to straighten everything back out and get things running back to normal again.

John Carroll:
All right. So rod, real, stuff like that. Okay, so I actually have a swim jig tied on right here because this is the same setup that I throw my Buzzbaits on. The same thing that I do with swim jig is the same thing I throw a Buzzbait. So this is a Denali Covert 7'2", yeah, 7'2" medium heavy, fast, on, I think that's 50 pound braid. That's what I'll use like my three eighths ounce, well, my quarters, three eighths, and half ounce. And then if I'm using a really small one, like this little eighth ounce dude, then I'll go with just a seven foot general purpose. This is a Denali AttaX seven foot, all-purpose rod. That's actually on fluorocarbon versus braid. Again because it's a lighter setup, I want with fluorocarbon instead of braid for that reason.

John Carroll:
Now, I know some of you're probably thinking, why fluorocarbon? It's a top water technique and you should never use fluorocarbon on top water because fluorocarbon sinks. Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but Buzzbait sink. So that whole argument of fluorocarbon sinks is irrelevant in this situation. It's irrelevant for two reasons. Like I said, one, Buzzbaits sink. The second reason is as you're reeling this back, your rod tip is up most of the time. You're controlling how this thing is going by moving your rod tip and you can kind of guide your Buzzbait to make sure it gets closer a lay down or closer to a dock or whatever. So the amount of line that's actually in the water to affect the sink rate is negligible. I mean, you're talking just a tiny amount of your line is actually in the water. It's not like it's a popper or a walking bait where a bunch of your lines sitting out there.

John Carroll:
Reel gear ratio. I like a 7:1 or up. Again, this thing sinks. It's a chunk of steel and lead. It's going to want to sink. So as soon as you cast it out, it hits the water, you need to start cranking and get that thing back. It's another advantage of having some sort of soft plastic is it helps it get up on pad quicker. So, it's adding more bulk back here in the back, but it's not heavy assuming you don't have a big salty bait. So it's not heavy, so it gets up on pad, gets coming back quicker, and stays in the strike zone longer. Versus you having to reel really fast to get it up, you can just crank, get it up on pad and slowly crank it back.

John Carroll:
But that's that guys. Super simple, not much to it, man. It's one of the most effective techniques that you can use, especially this time of year. These bass are keyed in on shad. I will throw a Buzzbait from pre-spawn through fall. I mean, I think the latest I've caught a Buzzbait fish, I live in Arkansas, the latest I caught a Buzzbait fish I think was December 2nd. As long as the water temp is in the mid-fifties or higher, I'm willing to throw one. Once it gets below mid-fifties, I start transferring into other baits. But as long as the water temp is above mid-fifties, there is a really, really, really good chance that I will have a Buzzbait tied on and sitting on deck somewhere. If it's not on deck, then, I mean, I've got a Buzzbait with me. That's a fact, guaranteed.

John Carroll:
But that's that guys. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Hopefully you guys learned something. If you did, please hit the thumbs up. Again, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell notification button. Like I said, my channel, Mongo Fishing, there'll be a link down in the description below. I'd dig it if you came over and checked my channel out also. Again, guys, thank you very much for watching. As always, get on the water, be safe, and go catch a monster bass.