Fishing finesse swimbaits can be a great way to trigger bites when it is tough to catch fish. Swimbaits are a natural presentation and using finesse gear and downsizing can lead to big bass!

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Video Transcript

Speaker 1:
What is going on everyone. My name is Benjamin Nowak with MONSTERBASS. In today's video we're going to talk about finesse swim bait fishing. This is a great technique to catch bass all season long, but we're going to really focus on winter time, cold weather, bass fishing during high pressure situations when it's tough to get bites. And what makes this technique so effective is you're fishing small swim baits like these Keitech Easy Shiner, your Strike King Rage Swimmers, your Keitech Swing Impact FATs. Small swim baits that look like a variety of different types of bait fish to trigger fish to bite.

Speaker 1:
Now, if you guys are heavy cover fishermen, if a lot of the bodies of water you fish are really shallow with a lot of grass, a lot of cover, this probably isn't the technique for you, but I encourage you guys to stick around because there might be some information in here that you can apply to help you guys go catch fish when things get tough on your body's water, as well.

Speaker 1:
We're going to start by talking about my favorite body styles, my favorite baits that I like to throw in this finesse swimbait category. And my favorite is the Keitech Easy Shiner. It's a super narrow body profile, flat sides, and a really skinny narrow tail. That's going to give it a really tight wobble coming through the water. It's going to look super natural.

Speaker 1:
And again you're fishing and typically high pressure situations when the fishing is tough, so fishing a flat sided bait, a really narrow bait like this is going to look really natural as opposed to something with a really wide tail kick. And that's why I choose it over maybe your Strike King Rage Swimmer or your Keitech Swing Impact FATs, which have a bigger tail, bigger, more rounded body. And it's going to move a lot more water. So Easy Shiner in my opinion, is a better bait for super high pressure situations. And is something that not a lot of people throw.

Speaker 1:
Where the Swing Impact FAT and the Strike King Rage Swimmer are going to shine however, are in more open water situations when you're fishing that Bay up in the water. when you want to draw fish from a little bit further away. That's when I'm going to go with something with this bigger boot tail. Something with a bigger tail kick. It's obviously going to have a little bit more drawing power because it's going to move a little bit more water and draw fish to that bait from a longer ways away.

Speaker 1:
I'm typically fishing at like a 3.5, three inch .... so three to three and a half inch size bait. I like that small profile. You're looking to imitate something that's a small bait fish and during these winter months, these colder periods, you're typically fishing around smaller bait fish. So those smaller profile baits will match the hash a little bit better and draw you a couple more bites.

Speaker 1:
The colors that I'm fishing are going to be dependent on the bodies of water that I'm fishing. I really like fishing this [IU 00:02:35] color up here in the North. It's got a greenish back with a little bit of orange flake, like really subtle orange flake, and a pearlescent white belly. It looks like emerald shiners. You can make it look like a perch. It looks like a variety of different bait fish that I typically am fishing around. But if you're fishing around shad or you're fishing around some more specific bait fish, maybe a color like this pearl blue, red pearl, which has a little bit of blue hue in the back, a little bit of red on the side, and then a pearlescent white belly will work. Or electric shad is a really good color, as well in the Keitech lineup. Basically all of those colors you can find in all three brands, but those are the colors that I like to throw. Just try to match the bait fish that you're fishing around and you'll be successful.

Speaker 1:
The heads that I'm matching up with these baits for finesse swim bating are really simple. I'm not going anything too crazy. I'm going with your round or ball head style designs. Now, this is a small football head style bait jig head. And this is three eighths of an ounce. I'm going to be fishing this in 15 foot of water deeper. Three eights for deeper than 15 foot of water. If I'm going less than 15 foot of water, I'm going with like a quarter ounce size. And if I'm going less than like 10 foot of water, I'll go down to an eighth or three sixteenths. You don't want to oversize the head on your bait. You want to let this bait act naturally and the heavier size head that you put on the bait, the less natural your bait's going to act, especially in that shallower water.

Speaker 1:
So use as alight away as you can possibly get away with, but normally it's about a quarter or a three eighths ounce size. You don't have to go crazy. You can just go by your standard round ball jig head that you would use for shaky head fishing. Anything will work for this swim bait technique. You just want something small that the bait will fit on with a small hook. You don't want to overpower anything with this technique.

Speaker 1:
The rod and reel that I like to use can keep super simple, as well. This is just my tube rod. It's a [Lew's 00:04:40] seven foot two medium powered tube rod. And a Lew's 3000 size reel. I like the bigger reel because I like to make really long cast with this bait and I want to get it as far away from me as possible because I feel like these fish need a long ways to track this thing. So I want to make the longest possible cast. And to do that, I'm going braid to fluorocarbon leader. I'm fishing 10 or 15 pound test fluorocarbon line to an eight pound fluorocarbon leader. I'm typically not going over eight pound test fluorocarbon just because again, you're fishing around typically cleaner water situations, finesse, highly pressured situations, fish lighter line to get more bites.

Speaker 1:
Again, my retrieve on this is really easy. I want to keep it close to the bottom, but I don't necessarily want to have it bog into whatever is on the bottom. If you have some dead grass, try to keep it up out of that and keep your hook clean. You want this thing to look supernatural. So when it's rigged on this jig head, you don't want to have a long tail of grass coming off the back of that. So if you're fishing it on bottom and you notice that there's grass on the back, try to pop it free. But if you continually have grass on the back of the bait, learn to let that bait sink about halfway down in the water column and slowly retrieve the bait back.

Speaker 1:
I'm not going to add a lot of rod action, I'm not going to pop it a lot. Most of my retrieve is just really slow, steady, standard retrieve. And if I feel it get snagged on something, I'm going to pop it free. But for the most part it's just turn that reel handle as slow as you possibly can.

Speaker 1:
Now when you set the hook on this, because you're using light line, light hooks, light baits, you don't need to really power hook set into these fish. Like if Alex Rudd set the hook with this bait like he does with a jig, he would break off every single fish. You just kind of want to pull into them, let that fish come up behind the bait and eat it and he's probably going to be ... ouch. That hurt.

Speaker 1:
He's probably going to be swimming towards you. And when he does that, you want to let him load up on that bait and just lean into that fish. If you set the hook, you're going to break a lot of fish off. You're going to lose a lot of fish, miss a lot of fish that maybe are hitting the tail of this bait and not getting hooked. So wait for your rod to load up. And I'm not going to do it again. Wait for your rod to load up and just lean into those fish and you're going to be really successful.

Speaker 1:
Hopefully there have been some tips in this video that are going to help you guys catch more fish during highly pressured, tough situations. If you guys have any questions or comments, please let us know in the comment section below. Thank you guys for watching. Hit subscribe on the MONSTERBASS channel and I'll catch you guys next time.