BASS ON GRUBS 
By Bob Jensen

This time of year is a great time to go fishing. Actually, anytime is a great time to go fishing, but right now there are a lot of different species of fish willing to bite. If you get in the right situation, the action can be really fast, and the opportunity to catch a big one is good right now also. Last year at this time I learned a new technique (at least it was new to me) that really helped me catch a lot of largemouth bass. The technique involved plastic, action-tailed grubs and jigheads. It's a simple method that anyone can employ pretty much anywhere, and it will help you put more fish in the boat.

The technique requires four inch Power Grubs, some eighth and quarter ounce jigheads, and a medium heavy action spinning rod spooled with eight or ten pound test line. A rod/reel combination that does the job very nicely is a six and a half to seven foot Lightning Rod or Fenwick HMG AV teamed with a Mitchell 300X and Sensation line. This combination provides plenty of hook-setting capability, yet casts the grub very well. It is also very good for other techniques like trolling small crankbaits or live-bait rigging.

After they spawn, largemouth bass will scatter over large flats. Those flats with weeds starting to emerge will be very good. You will find the bass scattered all over the flat. Flats that range from five to eight feet in depth seem to be very productive.

The actual technique is simple. You simply get on the flat and start casting. Let the bait sink a couple of feet and start reeling slowly. You don't want to be lifting the rod a lot, just point the rod-tip at the horizon and slowly reel. Much of the time you will see the line "jump", which indicates a strike. Set the hook right away.

A firm hookset is important. Four-inch grubs are bulky, and the bass can get them wadded up in their mouth. It can be kind of hard to get a good hookset through all that plastic. This is where the heavier rod and line become helpful as they provide for a better hookset.

It seems like a grub that is white or clear/glitter is best, especially in lakes with clear water. Other colors will do the job, but those two colors have been most productive for me.

Two and three inch grubs have been great fish-catchers for a long time, and continue to be very productive especially for crappies and walleyes. However, when it comes to largemouth bass, the four-inch size seems to be more productive especially for larger fish. We took some nice smallmouth last fall on the four-inch grub also. I plan on experimenting with grubs on smallies more this autumn.

For now though, you can bet that I and many other bassers will have a rod rigged with a four inch Power Grub whenever we're chasing largemouth during the next few weeks. This is a simple yet productive method, and that's a good deal anytime of the year.