Favorite bait for Smallmouth Bass

[Dan Blackburn]

What is your three most productive and favorite bait for fishing for Smallmouth??? Mine are top water poppers first because I love seeing the explosion on top. My second is a small jighead with a red hook and a tail off a rubber worm. Its seems to work good for the Bass in deeper water that are not biting anything else. My third favorite is a Roostertail spinner of course. In white or green. Its a fun bait to use and covers water pretty fast. Im interested in hearing what your favorite bait are and why...

[Allen Morgan]

I've had excellent luck with my own homemade #3 inline spinners.  The way I do them, they are basically a knock-off of a Mepps #3 Aglia with a dressed treble hook.  I usually upgrade the hook to a premium EWG treble.

The only problem I have with that lure is that the streams up here get some really odd weeds.  Tough stems that are maybe 20 - 30 FEET long.  And the water is maybe 2 feet deep, LOL.  What happens is the current pushes the weeds downstream.  You get "lanes" of open water and lanes that are weed-choked.  The Smallies are using the weeds for cover, so you have to fish near them.  I'll use inline spinners in the early season, until the weeds get thick.  Then, I switch to what is probably my #1 stream bait, a custom-painted and -tied 1/8th pillhead jig, on a jig-spinner frame that I swap out the blade for a hammered Chartreuse/Silver blade.  The jig-spinner frame is inline with the hook, making this lure fairly weedless.  I can fish this in the same stream with weeds, and the lure will deflect off the weeds and jump over them.  As soon as my lure crosses the weeds and hits a clear pocket, I'll drop my rod tip to let the lure helicopter down.  Oftentimes it gets INHALED at this point.

Not sure if I have a #3 lure.  I did catch several Smallies in a lake late Summer / early Fall last year on small minnow crankbaits.

I've just recently tied up some Egg-Sucking Leech flies and jigs.  I definitely want to give those a try this year and see how they do.

[John Sheehan]

In a small stream with Smallies up to 10-12" my favorite bait is a Burke plastic Hellgrammite on a flyrod.

[Neal Cohen]

My 2 go to flies are the popper,and the beaded wooly bugger,on a #4 hook,in black/a little flash.

[Michael]

Lures in the Rapala Shad Rap family have always been by bests. Small soft plastic crayfish and light action maribus in rivers and streams have also been good to me.

Shallow Shad Rap, Jointed Shad Rap, Shad Rap RS, and Shad Rap are killers.

[John Sheehan]

I should clarify .The plastic grubs have been most consistent but the more thrilling catches came on the other baits .

[John Sheehan]

Black Jitterbug,Storm Wiggle Wart,Purple 0r White Mister Twister Grub on 16th oz. or 1/8thoz. head.A 4th would be a Rattle Trap fished deep ripped off the bottom.